My writing space is almost ideal. It’s a big study, with comfortable armchairs, a couch, a massive wooden table and a library. There’s a large balcony overlooking a green, old park, what more can a writer dream of?
I prefer this room, or as we old fashionly call it “cabinet” to all other places and spaces in the apartment, maybe because, it holds our family history the most. Whenever I look up at the photographs on the bookshelves, I’m starting to remember all the different phases of our lives, the happy moments, childhood, and adolesance, travels, marriages, birthdays, anniversaries, all the major things that had happened and all the people who were once an integral part of our lives, who, still are, or who passed away, but their imprint and influence on us is still there. This room in a way is a passage to the past, to the people I loved, and to the time I spent with them, and on the other hand, it’s a tribute to them, to what they loved, how they lived and what they’ve accomplished. My book, in its hard cover and soft cover editions is just one among the many in this library…
Although, for me this is for now the perfect, most comfortable place to write, I’m dreaming that one day, hopefully in not so distant future I’ll be living outside the city, somewhere in a remote village, in a house with a yard where there’ll be pine trees, apple trees, and flowers, and dogs chasing one another, while I’ll be sitting in the garden and writing, with a cup of hot, tasty, freshly brewed coffee next to me.
I’m often asking myself what’s next, or what I would want my life to be in several years from now, and the sole image that comes to me every time, whenever I think of an ideal writing space, is a house far away from a densly populated, havily air-polluted city with newly emerging apartment blocks almost every day. Truth to be told, I envy all the writers who have that possibility of living outside the city and a luxury of writing full time.
I might even build a small farm, grow wine, or create a place that would be perfect for writer’s retreat, where everyone could come, share and exchange their ideas, and most importantly write their stories. The image of a house hounts me more and more, and maybe it’s a signal, an indication, or a hunch that it’s a time for a change, for choosing the way of living that would make me happy. Whenever I bring this topic to my friends their reactions vary from “oh, you’ll be bored to death after a week or two” to “it’s extremely hard logistcally, you’ll need a car,” (I don’t drive), and to “ an introvert as you are, it’s not the best idea of isolating yourself from others even more,” but deep down, I know I’m right, and the more so, I know I’ll do it, it’s just a matter of time, and a matter of finding your perfect place, finding a house that will have a new story to tell and a character of its own.