Our rooftop flat has a circle window. On clear evenings, it catches all the fire of the western sky as the sun makes its slow, summer descent. The light beams through the porthole like a spotlight and, over the course of an hour or so, tracks along our back wall. I lay on the couch and watched it make that journey one late afternoon, highlighting all of our favorite books along the way, catching the loving gleam in my brother and sister-in-laws' eyes in their wedding portrait. And then, in a blink, the sun dropped behind another row of buildings and the magic circle of light faded out.

This window is my favorite feature in our new place. Jonathan selected the apartment himself, months before I was able to fly over and join him in Oslo. The process included several trips around the city with a representative from a relocation company hired by his new employer. The rep helped him immensely! But in true Jonathan Camp style, this flat was one he found on finn.no (the most helpful Norwegian site, hands down, for finding apartments, jobs, etc.) on his own and asked the rep to look up for him. The pictures in the ad caught his eye for many reasons, and one was the circle window. When he walked in for the first time, he says he knew it was the one for us. If pressed, he'll even say aloud that, on the first walk through, he fell in love.

Image via Wikipedia

If I'm not careful, I'll catch myself writing. I will be swept by the spotlights of my conscious mind, and the hazards of the terrain will be magnified. Second-guessed words, phrases twisted rather than turned. Clichés will loom before me, like serpents in my garden, begging to be used and promising it won't cost me the integrity of my piece. Oh, if only last night hadn't been both dark and stormy.

But this is where I surrender. Five sentences. It's all I can manage these days.

If I'm not careful, I'll catch myself writing. If I allow my grasp on my pen to falter, or if I stop to correct my initial misspelling of the word falter, or, after that, the word misspelling, I will slow to a crawl, knee deep in the quicksand of my consciousness. Another word I loath to spell in ink, another landmine. And is land mine supposed to be one word or two?

Questions like that will get me caught for sure. And I can't afford to lose time or ground now. I'm getting out of this lockup today. Better to lighten my load, drop pesky weights like attention to grammar or spell check, and keep to the hopeful trail I've only this moment uncovered.

It's a sliver of space between angry trees and bushes sprouting man-eating flowers, the kind with melon-pink blooms as big as VW Bugs. The flowers smell like rotted meat, perhaps the decomposing remains of other would-be writers who slowed long enough to reconsider using such a violent metaphor, or else turned back to improve it, thinking the phrases "rotted meat" and "decomposing remains" didn't go far enough. As much as I want to scribble "gangrenous" in the margin just a few lines back, I know it will cost me my life, and today it's not worth it. Today I keep running, and the tongues of the big, vicious blooms loll on the jungle floor and lap at the flicker of my running ankles.

A single word hurtles through the branches, perforating the enormous green leaves, and slams into my temple. Flicker. And I'm down on my knees again, blood pounding in my veins. I feel heavy. Flicker. Of all the words I overuse in my writing (and there are many) the one that pops up most often is Flicker. Flicker and Flutter. Overused words, evidence of my dwindling vocabulary. I could have thought up a better word, I think as my palms slip in the mud and my hair swings into my face. But I doubt myself even now, for I've stopped, you see, and I'm going over that moment again and again, trying to find that better word so I can move on, but it isn't coming to me, and I'm sitting dumbfounded on the trail just waiting for the hounds to find my lily white throat.

What would a real writer do? Succumb to the inflicted self-torment of listing her own shortcomings? Become distracted by the snort and snuffle of a fellow café patron blowing his nose? Close her book and reach for the cinnamon roll?