Blue

I live in a house in a room where the walls are painted a blue that is a cross between the deepest ocean and a blueberry popsicle. The weather outside was luscious today, a chance to get a dose of Vitamin D that we usually don’t have very often this time of year in Portland. Still, I spent half of my day inside. When I’m here surrounded by the blue walls and paper blinds covering windows with old bars on the outside, I feel trapped. My mind can’t even escape and it becomes a sort of echo chamber in here, except that implies that I have thoughts in my head that ricochet off the walls and set up an uneasy resonance, but it’s more like a heavy sedative that holds me in place and keeps the mental traffic down to a slow trickle. Sometimes I step on the front door and look around the neighborhood, test the air outside with my nose, skin and lungs. If the sun is out the glare of it makes me squint my eyes to protect them. Everyone knows how overwhelming bright the sun is in the Pacific Northwest. I put out feelers and think about leaving the house, but I don’t know what I would do. I usually crawl back inside after a few awkward minutes on the porch, wondering what the rest of the people in the world are doing and why, what compels them to go out, to strive and achieve, and why they aren’t affected by the sedative in the way I am. Maybe it is just because they don’t have blue walls, but I doubt it.