The air in my room is getting stale. It’s too cold to ventilate. Minus twenty plus the wind. Opening the window for a moment creates the illusion of fresh air. The temperature inside drops quickly. The air is arid. The illusion is dispersed as the air heats up again. The stifling feeling is compounded by the lotion I have to rub into my hands constantly to keep the skin from drying. A couple of days ago it dried so bad the skin on the back of my left hand cracked open and started to bleed.

I have six lamps in my room. Only one of them works. My room is lit by that one lamp and the glow of the monitor. My halogen lamp used to flicker. Just as I got used to it, it broke down. The big lamp in my ceiling has never worked. Another lamp has been broken for years. I have not thrown it away because I hang my socks to dry on it. Two lamps stand on the tops of the pillars. They have green light bulbs. Neither is connected to electricity.

Just as I was going to sleep, the halogen lamp came back to life by itself. It may have been accidentally left switched on, since it was dead. At exactly the same moment, my left loudspeaker, a 20 year old piece of junk, started emitting the sound of analogue interference and a loud, bop bop bop noise. It ceased only after I had disconnected it from the electricity.