When I moved into the house I'm living in, there was a small rectangular room without a door off the dining room and separated from the living room by a wall that seemed a late addition. It became christened "the nook", then later my "writing nook." I don't write in here as often as I like, preferring the room with the couch or the upstairs desk where I can look out onto the backyard and watch the birds. Here I stare at a red wall. In my immediate line of vision is an odd grab bag of knick-knacks, souvenirs, postcards and various flotsam and jetsam of my decades arranged in no particular order and without a lick of logic. I'm strangely attached to the space, though - maybe because I don't see it every day and it was early on associated with my solitary activity of writing. That ceramic cat was purchased for use in a film I made. There's an old poppy picked up at the Canadian Mission for Remembrance Day, a plastic moose, a Pez dispenser whose candy has congealed together, postcards a dozen deep from Saugerties and Woodstock, and pennies and push pins and thrift store plates and marbles and paper clips and post-it notes saying "have a nice day" and a yoyo I never mastered - it's a clearing house for the vivid reminders of the increments of days, the uncategorizable. Living in their own little Bardo.