A Room Of My Own

My office is the sun porch of our Rogers Park apartment.

My monitor faces a window some six feet tall and half as wide. A window the same size stands to its left so that I essentially face a wall of approximately 36 square feet of glass. Immediately to my left (so close if I reach toward it I don't have to fully extend my arm to touch the glass) are three windows, each the same six feet high, though slightly narrower. Six feet behind me is the mirror image of arranged glass as the side-by-side mirrors in front of me.

Eight feet to my right hangs a heavy curtain of luxurious red and gold, separating me from the rest of the house.

We're on the second floor some twenty feet off the ground and thee tree outside the window is twice that tall. In summer the thickest foliage abuts the building at my eye level and squirrels scamper from the trunk to my sill on a daily basis, occasionally pausing to use their little hands (with the most delicate little fingers thin as claws) to eat some found treasure (and maybe contemplate the guy on the other side of the glass...sitting in that chair and tapping his fingers against that contraption).

In the winter the trees, of course, are bare and the lower sun throws long, thin shadows., like abstract, fine lattice work.

It's very much (I imagine) like living in a glass house. When people speak of rooms with "good natural light" they're talking about my office. It's like writing in a tree house.

It's the most creation-inducing space I've ever lived in, my 50 or so square feet of sun porch.