Somedays I think about living an alternative life. In my mind, another person swirls around, doing some things differently than I would. I'm not sure if that person is another me or just another person swirling around. I like that word, swirl. It has a great mouth feel to it...like custard. It's velvety, fun to play with and goes down easily. Swirl.

But my alternative life? It combines every element of creativity known to us. Photography, painting, writing, music, food...it's what makes the world go around. It's what makes me go around and round the block, and over the tree top and under the bush and into the basement and out into the sky touching the roof.

My alternative life has an art studio of my own. A room of my own. You like that? yea, I do too.

So anyway...my art studio? It isn't terribly big. I imagine it to be a small, rectangular space, just big enough to fit a few drop cloths on the floor, an easel, paint brushes, enough shelves on the wall to fit oil paints and pastel and a window. I need a window. Light and warmth are my saviors.

This is my room. The room where I dip brushes into pots of paint and let the motion and mood of my mind direct where my hand goes on the blank canvas. I swirl circles, dot on some polkas, play with short, choppy Van Gogh like brush strokes in every color imaginable and then I pull a Jackson Pollock and just end up framing my cream colored drop cloths tinted with body art.

In the background, I have reggae music playing on my nearly extinct and highly dusty tape recorder. Bob Marley, maybe. Maybe even pretend reggae from UB40. I think that's better. I can sway my hips to Red, Red Wine and sip it from my cup too. Outside, from my window, I can see the sun and the clouds playing with each, trying to outdo the other's presence and turning the light into my studio into a controlled havoc.

From my window, I can even see delicate, green tendrils of vines beginning to break through the ground and shoot up, bending their own bodies towards the sun, trying to follow it in the sky. Never mind that in this life, I have ten black thumbs. My alternative life has my own vegetable garden growing squash and corn and peas and potatoes and onions and carrots and cucumbers and tomatoes. I have a hen that lays eggs. I have a desk that is covered with sheets of paper with poems and artist statements and speeches scribbled all over them.

And my own little Pulitzer prize, egging me on to skip the attack of the lazy, spend my days working and my nights in the company of the people I love.

Oh. And my Pulitzer is a door stop. Because I like fruit cake.