Jacob Lawrence, "Dreams No.4: Railroad Station" (1966)
Jacob Lawrence, Dreams No. 4: Railroad Station (1966)
Can a Game Be Literature?

Mark's Pages

May 29, 2004:

You're not making good use of this room.

Old furniture, thrift store maybe: a lumpy couch, a dirty love seat. Old plants, large, tree-like, but dead: dry and brown. In a nook there are frayed cushions, stacked, unused.

Nevertheless there are people there, friends, standing, talking, glasses in hand. A party.

This would be a nice front room if you fixed it up.

The bedroom though is lovely. Light, large picture windows to the left, parquet floors. Stairs leading down: an attic room? Looking at the baseboards you'd like to lay model train tracks along the walls, all four walls, maybe throughout the house. You could put notes on the train cars and send them to other rooms. To make space for more track you could stack them, double-decker, like freeways in crowded cities: the San Francisco Bay Bridge.

You awaken with irritation, thinking, "This isn't the life I want."