In the morning, I don’t talk to anyone, nor do I think about certain things.
I try to stay within certain confines. I imagine this as a narrow, shadowy corridor with dim bare walls. I’m moving down this corridor, getting to the place where I can write.
I brush my teeth, get dressed, make the bed. I avoid conversation, as my husband knows. I am not yet in the world, and there is a certain risk involved in talking: the night spins a fine membrane, like the film inside an eggshell. It seals you off from the world, but it’s fragile, easily pierced.
I go down the hall into the kitchen. I don’t like breakfast, but it’s necessary to get through it in order to get to coffee.
I fix a bowl of granola, laced with a bogus syrupy non-milk substitute. Both of these are too sweet and the granola is too crunchy. The whole thing is charmless, like a bowl of horse feed, but it’s sustenance, and it validates coffee.
I eat standing up at the kitchen window.
I live on the fifteenth floor, and this window faces west. Below me to the west are three brownstones, and beyond them rises a big apartment building. Its tall east wall, facing me, is windowless and blank. On bright mornings, between eight and nine o’clock, a shadow appears high on this wall, clear and precise. It’s the silhouette of a young tree, a conifer, dense and brushy, like a Christmas tree. The real tree is on a rooftop garden to the east, out of sight. I’ll never see it. The shadow tree moves majestically, marking the slow passage of the sun. During this stately journey I watch its perfect negative image. The shadow tree floats serenely through the air, its real self somewhere else, green and thriving, radiant in the morning light.
I’ve turned the kettle on for coffee. It’s instant.
I drink instant because I don’t care how it tastes, all I want is the kick. And I don’t want to wait for perking or dripping. I don’t want machinery that might go wrong. I don’t want to hear the loud impatient sound of grinding beans, or find that the machine has jammed, or whatever coffee machines do. I also don’t want to discover that I’ve run out of granola. The worst case is running out of coffee or half-and-half. I can make substitutions for granola (toast), but not for them. There is no substitute for coffee, and I can’t drink it black. I’m careful never to run out.
I don’t read the paper or listen to the news. One glance at the headlines, the apprehension of the dire straits of the world, and it would all be over. The membrane will be pierced; it will shrivel and turn to damp shreds. I will find myself thrust into the outside world, my opinions required on unfaithful politicians and the precarious Middle East and the threat of global warming: I should really take action. The voices of the outside world are urgent and demanding.
So I don’t read the news or listen to it. Nor do I make a single phone call, not even to find out if the plumber is actually coming that day to fix the sink, which he has failed to do now for five days in a row. One call and I’m done for. Entering into the daily world, where everything is complicated and requires decisions and conversation, means the end of everything. It means not getting to write.
The reason the morning is so important is that I’ve spent the night somewhere else.
This is nowhere I can describe exactly, only that it’s mysterious and limitless, a place where the mind expands. Deep, slow currents, far below the surface, shift me in ways I needn’t understand. There is no sound, no scrutiny. Waking, I’m still close to that silent, preconscious, penumbral state, still focussed inward. I’m still in that deep, noiseless place, listening to its voices, very different from those of the outside world.
The kettle shrills. I pour boiling water into my mug, swirl, pour it out. The coffee must be very hot. I spoon brown crystals into the heated mug, and pour the boiling water over the little shoal. The crystals dissolve and the mug fills with dark liquid. I believe this is the elixir of the imagination. I can’t write without it: I believe this. I add a long dollop of half-and-half, which turns it a pale creamy tan.
In my study, I set the mug next to my writing chair, across the room from my desk. My computer is at my desk, connected to the internet by a short thick blue cable. I unplug the cable and carry the laptop to my writing chair, where the blue cable does not reach. I sit down, free from the endless electronic niggling of the internet. My computer is now empty of anyone’s thoughts but my own.
Sometimes I read a bit, to enter into a sensibility that’s useful for whatever I’m working on. I read “The Journals of John Cheever” while I wrote “This Is My Daughter.” I read “Anna Karenina” while I wrote “Sweetwater.” I read “The Hours” while I wrote “Cost.” I read “Atonement” while I was writing “Sparta.” I came to know those books very well. I could open them anywhere and know the passage. I broke the spine of Atonement, though I only read one section of it, over and over.
I read a page or two, then close the book.
This is the moment. On a good day I’m now where I need to be, still in that deep dreaming place, where I can listen.
Right now, I’m like the tree.
On a good day, I’m caught up by something larger than myself, held in the light by some celestial movement. For a brief charged time I may be irradiated, able to cast a shadow version of something I only imagine. The shadow will never be the bright true self that I know exists, but it will be as precise as I can make it, as real, as sharp, as beautiful. I will cast this shadow into the air, where it may never be seen, or where it may be seen at a great distance, and only by one person, someone I will never know. The point is to cast the shadow out into the air.
I start in, tapping at the keyboard, setting down words, hoping that the light will catch me up.
Roxana Robinson is a novelist, essayist, short-story writer, and instant-coffee drinker. Her new novel, “Sparta,” will be published in June.
Photograph by Peter Marlow/Magnum.
