The room feels empty, but it’s not. Sounds seem to resonate within the four walls, and light flows in unrestrained. She lies on the bed, hair spread out like ink diffusing through water. The chipping paint on the ceiling occupies most of her attention, although she is not unaware of the silence that seems to make her drowsy and reclusive. How dull that shade of yellow is, she thinks. Yellow. Ye-llow. She plays with the word in her head, flipping it around and saying- not thinking- it backwards (woll-ey). A picture is worth a thousand words. Would she make a pretty picture?

The room feels empty, but it’s not. It should be, she thinks. She cannot imagine why, though. It’s one of those things which just .. “should be”. Voices from downstairs float up. It;s a conversation she felt like interrupting. But reclusive-ness has it’s rules, which one must adhere to. If only one could be selectively reclusive. Selectively silent – she always loved alliteration. But to escape from questions, decorum and prevent possible-offensive-remarks that might escape from her mouth, she chooses to continue her inspection of the pale-yellow painted chipping ceiling.

She was never good with dealing with awkward situations. The kind where she stalls a perfectly smooth flowing conversation with a remark that seems to drop from nowhere. Sometimes she can feel the awkwardness while she is still forming the syllables. It’s too late to stop then. She would just make things more awkward. Then, the whole process of covering up for what she meant despite not wanting to, but knowing it would be expected of her. The retreating words. They danced the dance of apology – if they had bodies they would surely be squirming with eyes downcast, feverishly waiting for the moment to pass and someone might change the subject.

Is jealousy of inanimate objects still jealousy? They never have to dance the dance of apology. They never have to fill up the empty space of disapproving silence with harsh, grating and forced sounds of unnecessarily cheerful laughter.

The room feels empty but it’s not. She is in the room. The only animate being. The room, with chipping paint. The room that matches her silence with it’s own.

A face on the street -
What is he thinking about?
The errant son, the nagging wife
The neighbor with the sultry pout?

He passes by-
Does he see me, too?
Or is he only worried if
The divorce will come through?

Chewing gum on his shoe -
Will he know it’s there?
Perhaps he only thinks of
What his mistress is going to wear

A face on the street -
I wonder where he goes?
When he’s weary and tired
Of this life he never chose

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. -Sylvia Plath

Sometimes I wonder if I’m really a writer. What is a writer? Anyone can be one, right? All you need to do is well.. write. It’s one of the easiest things to do. To put down a bunch of sentences down that sometimes, make sense only to yourself, and the you are a “writer”. Why would anyone want to be something so easy? Sure, you need some amount of skill, but most of the time you could fake it right? Fake the pain, or the wit, or the feeling. And from what I hear, you don’t even get paid that well.

It really gets to me that I can’t even write when I want to. How am I going to survive writing for a living ? What happens when the words don’t come? I am one of those people who leave things to the last minute. Things just seem to work better that way, although I try planning ahead. I guess you could say I’m spontaneous, and that planning just never works. So although deadlines mean something to me, I’m never well prepared for them. I just give it my best shot, and I don’t even feel guilty about not losing any sleep over it.

However, I feel horrible if I’ve written/done something which I haven’t put any feeling into. Sometimes, things may not please other people but as long as I know that I’m satisfied with what I’ve done, nothing can touch me.

I guess thats what Plath means about self-doubt being the worst enemy.