But the light in the bedroom is dim, and as I woke from napping the walls looked like the most depressing shade of pale brown I'd ever seen. The only color more depressing I can recall is the brownish-orangey one that the window shades in the house we lived in until I was six years old had. When the afternoon sun shone through them they took on a color that made me want to go back to sleep and never wake up again. In dim light the walls in this apartment provoke the same sort of feeling.
Outside it's very cold again, but it's also fairly quiet, with only intermittent traffic noise from the freeway, so I went out to wake myself up with some fresh air. It sort of worked. I feel a bit awake now, so the wall color didn't swallow me tonight. I have no idea why. I were that wall color I'd devour the entire world.
On a happier note, I went to CVS this afternoon and bought fresh dish washing liquid, which smells very nice, and then I stopped at Taco Bell for a burrito. No night on which I don't have to make dinner is a total loss. There is also still pie. Perhaps I should say that some pie remains, as all pie tends toward stillness, just as language tends toward ambiguity, just as my brain tends toward muddle.
Half price sale at Goodwill tomorrow. Something to look forward to. Tonight I only feel like looking back, but it seems pretty empty. It works out that way sometimes.
Sunday Verse
Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock
by Wallace Stevens
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.