Lately, I’ve been thinking about our desire to reach that place we call outside: the exterior, the open air, the wild beyond the doorstep. Why does that space evokes normalcy or sanity? Why do we miss it so? And what does that say about how we treat indoor spaces, the architecture of interiors, the experience of being “stuck inside”?
This newsletter is, obliquely, about some of those ruminations.
In other news, this month I wrote about zines being made in isolation; Para Site’s show on customary women’s art in indigenous communities; and growth and stasis in this short prose-poem for Bitter Melon.
As always, thanks for reading.
***
“This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so—I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.”
—The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
“Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one saw. So now I think of the fire; the steady film of yellow light upon the page of my book; the three chrysanthemums in the round glass bowl on the mantelpiece. Yes, it must have been the winter time, and we had just finished our tea, for I remember that I was smoking a cigarette when I looked up and saw the mark on the wall for the first time.”
—The Mark on the Wall, 1921, Virginia Woolf.
“What am I doing in this place and who am I?”
—Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966, Jean Rhys.
*
At the very beginning of social distancing, I counted precisely 17 interior walls in my less than 500 square foot flat—including the short expanse between bathroom and bedroom, the narrow perimeters behind doorways, and the white squares under all the windows. In the past three months, I have leaned on, brushed against or stared at all 17 surfaces. Isolation has made them familiar. All day long I watch the light recede from the ceiling to the floor out the window. I gaze at the long hairline crack by the television. Those blueish scuffs near the sofa: I can sketch them by memory. There is no room for newness, or surprise.
But the other day, I discovered a new wall behind the bedroom door.
*
“The mark was a small round mark, black upon the white wall, about six or seven inches above the mantelpiece.
How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it . . .”
—The Mark on the Wall, 1921, Virginia Woolf.
*
We had been living in this flat since 2019. And yet, not once had I closed the bedroom door and stood behind it in the same room.
The triangle of space was so tiny that my face almost touched the wall. It seemed darker than the others. Where is the sun?
Other things I noticed: how the floor there carries a more condensed pattern of wood, the dust piling up in the corner. How quiet it is, this wall. Not like the other walls, promising music and sun and neighborly laughter.
*
“There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down . . . I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store.”
—The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
*
When I was much younger, I shared an attic space with my brother in our house in London. It was terrifying, but not for reasons you would expect; no ghoul or spirit visited us, but I would routinely sleep walk and wake up with the giant air conditioner pushed over or among cold sweaters in the wardrobe, having locked myself inside of it. Once, I woke up shrieking with blood on my face. Just a nose bleed. (My poor brother.)
I had trouble falling asleep too, paralyzed with fear over recurring nightmares. The only way I could calm myself was by looking at the yellow speckled wallpaper in the room and conjuring stories from the shapes. I saw tiny red-eyed sprites and goblins with meter-long ears and hats; porcupines with engorged spikes and leprechauns throwing rocks.
Much later, I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, and Virginia Woolf’s The Mark on the Wall. Walls and wallpapers and attics and enclosed spaces, I thought. So much to read of them.
*
“But as for that mark, I’m not sure about it; I don't believe it was made by a nail after all; it's too big, too round, for that. I might get up, but if I got up and looked at it, ten to one I shouldn’t be able to say for certain; because once a thing’s done, no one ever knows how it happened. Oh! dear me, the mystery of life; The inaccuracy of thought! The ignorance of humanity! To show how very little control of our possessions we have—what an accidental affair this living is after all our civilization.”
—The Mark on the Wall, 1921, Virginia Woolf.
“There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even SMOOCH, as if it had been rubbed over and over.
I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round and round and round—round and round and round—it makes me dizzy!”
—The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
*
Wide Sargasso Sea is an anti-colonial and feminist response to Brontë’s Jane Eyre—Rhys reinvents the mad woman in the attic, naming her, giving her a story. The Yellow Wallpaper was written to disprove the theory that domestic blandness could cure hysteria or depression in women. (Gilman herself had suffered from the latter previously, and for a period of time was only allowed two hours of mental stimulation per day. No writing.) And Woolf’s introspective writing: so meandering, so expansive. From that mark in the wall she travels to the beginning of time. For these women, the outside meant liberty; freedom.
I think of these stories when I sit alone in my flat, hour after hour, trying to write, ruminating and worrying on the edge of insanity. Of course, my circumstances are different. Right now, outside is danger. Outside is where the chaos is. Inside is where I am privileged and safe.
*
“I didn’t realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman.
By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.”
—The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
*
Passing time, I try and find new walls in this flat. I crouch under windows and flatten myself against doorways. Is this another one? I ask myself. Does this feel new?
The longer I’m here, the more I find comfort in these very quiet, very small new experiences. I look at old photographs and notice color details. The lip of a cup has the faintest chip on it. I like the solidity of these walls, and with each one feel not more enclosed, but more open.
*
“Indeed, now that I have fixed my eyes upon it, I feel that I have grasped a plank in the sea; I feel a satisfying sense of reality which at once turns the two Archbishops and the Lord High Chancellor to the shadows of shades. Here is something definite, something real. Thus, waking from a midnight dream of horror, one hastily turns on the light and lies quiescent, worshiping the chest of drawers, worshiping solidity, worshiping reality, worshiping the impersonal world which is a proof of some existence other than ours.”
—The Mark on the Wall, 1921, Virginia Woolf.