#342

Should I just write about my desk? Describe the desk itself in detail, the contents of its drawers, the geography of objects upon its surface? Factually Pointless, the blog in which Joseph Lidd describes his immediate surroundings in laborious and unnecessary--yet to his own mind, vastly incomplete!--detail.

They say that the devil is in the details, while God is present in the sweeping picture. A revelatory piece of wisdom which I have not made up my mind on; my operating parameters for being-in-the-world tend to be very apt to oscillate between the coarse grain and the fine in all things, so my predilection for details is always tempered and sometimes hampered by my adoration of the sweeping picture, and vice versa. 

Maybe we all have this condition, to some degree. I have known men I thought to be careless in the extreme when it comes to the attention to detail required to possess what I think of as a nuanced understanding of the world and the self which navigates the world, and their big-picture thinking was none too inspired, either. Further exposure revealed their attention to detail broad, deep, and almost manic when it came to fixing up and tooling out their car, with impressive results. There are many dimensions to every life, varying in size, vibrancy, and gravitational presence. 

Anyway, my desk. Strap in.

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Made of a darkish, heavy wood, stained deep brown, it's about five feet wide and not quite two feet deep. Not perfectly rectangular, the surface bulges smoothly towards the front, and bulges and curves at the front corners. The top stands on two thick pillars comprised of the cabinetry; three drawers on either side, the lowest the deepest, the highest the shallowest. There is a middle drawer in between them below the top, just above where the sitter's legs go, between the other drawers. The handles are wood with a metal core. There is an ornate symmetrical inset of a stoppered decanter of some kind framed in vines, leaves, and flowers in paler wood, very faded and darkened, on the front of the middle drawer. The surface is much scored and faded, though still quite smooth and some time away from splintering. 

The right-hand bottom drawer holds completed works of mine that exist in looseleaf or stapled form only due to format considerations, as well as collected laser-printed poems and short works I have been taught with or I have used to teach. Also, fully inscribed notebooks and composition books, every page filled or used to satisfaction. As recently as yesterday this drawer may have also come to house a gift I received from an old friend of mine, a gift of special dried fungi.

Above that, the drawer holds partially filled or new notebooks and composition books, waiting for their time in the sun and subsequently sequestration one level below. Above that is the pencil, eraser, and colored pencil drawer, grouped in a metal divider by category and level of use. New Wood Pencils, In Process Wood Pencils, Colored Pencils, Mechanical Pencils (lead no finer than .7 mm), Erases & Utility Razors & Retired Pencils. There is also a pencil sharpener tossed in with the New Pencils, and a high-quality pair of scissors (gray, Fiskars, titanium) in front of the divider.

On the opposite side, the top drawer is given to pens and sundry tools. A calligraphy pen set, many ballpoints, a brush pen, Sharpie markers, a dry-erase. A collection of paintbrushes, mostly very fine-sized. My old-ass iPod I don't have the heart to get rid of, a USB computer mouse, a wireless computer mouse, my collection of flash drives, several drafting compasses, some random stickers I haven't found a place for, and some Champion pins from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in a little pouch I got from a pipe case I once bought.

Below that, my collection of bookmarks, which contains examples of such variety as to satisfy any predilection I might have, to suit more or less any book that I might get my hands on. Pinky-sized to postcard-sized, in metal, plastic, leather, cloth, laminated cross-stitch, made from scratch, specially designed--I got a lot of 'em, folks. This drawer also contains wooden and plastic drafting and regular rulers, and drafting templated with like the shapes all in 'em. Think I described them pretty well last time I detailed my desk. 

Bottom drawer on the left side contains loose notes in a yellow mailer which comprise seed material for a lot of future or never-to-be projects. Basically it's an envelope containing chicken scratch on torn paper. This drawer also contains fully used-up notebooks; actually, the bulk of them. It always catches me off-guard, how much nonsense and babble I have actually set to paper in this life. And to be published, to be shown, only a light skimming of the cream off the top; the rest, between me, God, fire, dust, the digital aether, and the landfill.

Finally the middle drawer contains life documents, stuff the government needs, medical shit, whetever. That drawer bores the shit out of me and I actually hate it. This aspect of me is well-known and documented. 

Arrayed on the desktop, at my right hand on the edge sits a planter gifted to me by a friend in which I never planted anything, but which holds a currently full mason jar of water, a paper bag with some trash and part of an eighth of weed, and this silly pencil case, a big soft printed school bus riding around a bunch of Marvel superheroes who are very dangerously sticking their recognizable torsos out the windows, setting a hell of bad example. Next to the case is a thing that came with my bike locks for securing them to the bicycle (I do not do this; if I plan to stop somewhere on a ride or am conducting routine business travel I equip my small Osprey camping backpack I got from my dad with the locks and all other necessaries, like a bandanna for wiping off sweat and keys and stuff), the electronic key for our van, a black Bic lighter, my currently empty Field Museum Sue coffee mug from the nineties, a tube of black acrylic paint, a loose zipper bit from my Zelda messnger bag, a roll of scotch tape, a stud finder, recently decomissioned metal keys, a 5/8 angled shiny blue painbrush, a roll of mounting tape, a plastic tray which is actually part of the package for the tape I am repurposing as a painter's palette, and a fragment of a Japanese poem written in Chinese translated by Burton Watson I hand-transcribed in green marker pen, by Isonokamu no Yakatsugu, called The Small Hills:

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"Hills beneath Heaven;

On the broad earth, trees--

These things that the small man spurns

The wise shall nourish.

Though I want in the states of distress

How should I decline the defenses of virtue?"

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My laptop rests on a tower comprised of a Thumler's Tumbler Rock Polisher box, with everything in it--my younger brother's old workhorse. I tried to tumble some of my collection, given that my mom wanted the thing out of her basement and I had it around, but the belt that the tumbler needs to run snapped, rendering it all something of a pointless mess. I guess the rocks got a washing, which isn't all bad. On top of that is a thick red plastic tray used to contain the tumbler in operation, and on that I have a huge boxing book and book of myths and legends from around the world, both very large in surface area and not too thick, together adding a crucial inch while maintaining perfect stability. Then the heat tray on which I rest my laptop, which apart from dissipating heat puts the laptop at a slight angle, better for typing. My elbows are bent to the perfect angle, my forearms perfectly perpendicular to the ground. It works, basically. 

Left of the work tower, the partially-filled and empty notebooks I mean to make use of during this next semester. In front of them, a currently empty hot/cold thermos with a school bus print I got as an appreciation gift from a parent. To the left of all that, flush against the left-side edge, a barely-functioning typewriter not currently loaded with a roll, stored in its large faded tan case. The case provides an altar for my reference materials: Complete William Shakespeare, on which is perched my New American New Catholic Bible, and next to them, my three dictionaries. At the moment, on top of my dictionaries I have my current reading material and a little sheaf of art that I mean to hang up in the office soon. 

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Well, that was illuminating, yes? I guess I could mention that the carpet is thick, gray speckled with brown and black, not really to my taste, and the walls are, annoyingly, sponge-painted. Say-lah-vee. 

Time to set the day in motion, motherfuckers, and may the Lord be with us all. 

--JL