first floor
The first floor of my house is a unity of space. There are no boundaries separating living room from workspace from dining area from from kitchen. Only the bathroom is enclosed, with two walls and a door.
It is impossible to be alone here. Entering this space, to the right of the door is the sofa. On top of this sofa are my papers, on top of which is my brother's schoolbag, inside of which are his papers. To the right of the sofa is a bedside table with a circular surface, on which piles and piles of heavy textbooks and an exercise mat is placed.
I work on the leftmost edge of this sofa, situating my laptop on whatever I can improvise as a table.
To the left of the sofa is the cabinet housing the TV, a broken DVD player flanked by three swans, the stereo, and many CDs. To the left of that is another table, a longer and browner one, with tangled cable wires, a laptop that's never turned off, an ashtray, and a cup of coffee that may or may not be swirling with ants. In front of the table is a swiveling chair; behind it is a computer table, improvised to house printers and modems and power supplies. My father's workspace.
Behind the computer table is a TV on a small bookshelf with three-levels containing mostly my books, my sister's books, books from friends, and cookbooks. The TV is in front of the dining table with six chairs. From there it is array in disarray: two refrigerators. A display cabinet with mementos and books. A plastic drawer with four compartments. The water dispenser. A plastic table which used to be upstairs. Tons upon tons of law books and folders. And then the kitchen space. And then the bathroom.
I do not know how we manage to keep to ourselves. My father watches the news on his chair as my brother watches Spongebob Squarepants, seated at the head of the dining table as I type out my article in my laptop, situated on a dining chair which I have improvised, for the moment, to be my table. It is not a challenge to us.
Our first floor is a unity of space, inhabited by distinct, separate, individual wills. A scatter plot. Separate points in a Cartesian space, with no point of origin, no line connecting us, no segments bisecting us. Simply situated in specific coordinates.
It is impossible to be alone here. Entering this space, to the right of the door is the sofa. On top of this sofa are my papers, on top of which is my brother's schoolbag, inside of which are his papers. To the right of the sofa is a bedside table with a circular surface, on which piles and piles of heavy textbooks and an exercise mat is placed.
I work on the leftmost edge of this sofa, situating my laptop on whatever I can improvise as a table.
To the left of the sofa is the cabinet housing the TV, a broken DVD player flanked by three swans, the stereo, and many CDs. To the left of that is another table, a longer and browner one, with tangled cable wires, a laptop that's never turned off, an ashtray, and a cup of coffee that may or may not be swirling with ants. In front of the table is a swiveling chair; behind it is a computer table, improvised to house printers and modems and power supplies. My father's workspace.
Behind the computer table is a TV on a small bookshelf with three-levels containing mostly my books, my sister's books, books from friends, and cookbooks. The TV is in front of the dining table with six chairs. From there it is array in disarray: two refrigerators. A display cabinet with mementos and books. A plastic drawer with four compartments. The water dispenser. A plastic table which used to be upstairs. Tons upon tons of law books and folders. And then the kitchen space. And then the bathroom.
I do not know how we manage to keep to ourselves. My father watches the news on his chair as my brother watches Spongebob Squarepants, seated at the head of the dining table as I type out my article in my laptop, situated on a dining chair which I have improvised, for the moment, to be my table. It is not a challenge to us.
Our first floor is a unity of space, inhabited by distinct, separate, individual wills. A scatter plot. Separate points in a Cartesian space, with no point of origin, no line connecting us, no segments bisecting us. Simply situated in specific coordinates.