A Look Behind the Blog

Posted on August 15, 2003 in Possessions Residences

I have never written of my immediate environment except in passing. I sit at a desk in a room where most of the pieces of furniture are orphans. Each of the computers is a different make. Only some of the bookcases and the chair I am sitting in have mates.

My desk is piled high with books, empty prescription bottles, empty cans of diet Seven-Up, papers, books, a flashlight, a camera, a scanner, and wires. I’ve brought down a souvenir book illustrating “The Overland Trail: From the Golden Gate to the Great Salt Lake Along the Southern Pacific American Canyon Route via Ogden”. I need it for a story that I am working on. I have a guide to Roadside Geology of Utah that I am using to plan our vacation laying on top of a pile of nature guides atop the scanner and a short story that I am torturing partly overlaying that.

Five red Chinese gods overlook my work: one for money, one for wisdom, one for hope, one for joy, and the last for sex. A stuffed gecko keeps them company. The cats don’t seem to know that he exists.

A desk-bound bookshelve arches over all of this. Here you will find some of my well-thumbed reference collection: a microform edition of the Oxford English Dictionary that I used to be able to read without glasses or the aid of a magnifying glass; a Webster’s Third New International Dictionary which accepts “nucular” as an acceptable pronunciation of “nuclear”; a dictionary of world religions; various books about mythology and symbols; Morrison’s three volume The Oxford History of the American People, 1869-1963; Lear’s Book of Nonsense, and a collection of work by Ogden Nash.

At the very top: two lamps; a wood-carving of an eagle harrying a chamois that my grandfather brought from the Val d’Aosta where he was born; a pair of kachinas; a big horn ram carved out of iron wood (just to remind the conservatives that some of us progressive “sheep” are rams); a jackalope; and Ambrose’s ashes. To my left is a wall covered with pictures and junk that I have picked up over the years. Behind me and all around me, bookcases filled with the volumes covering the interests of Lynn and myself.

I don’t know what this says about me — other than the fact that I am a sloppy person as attested by the messy floor, the scattered cat toys, and the wires flowing out from under the desk. I don’t pretend that this room is me: it’s the place I go to work on the computer. I do most of my writing in my bed or in the big red chair in the living room. Do you think you know me now?

I doubt it.