The Believer Magazine, a funky, fun, overly-literate, literary zine, often asks writers to describe their desks. It’s a bit like asking someone to describe their refridgerator, which I used to do, for fun, while conducting job interviews.
Quick, describe your refridgerator. Do you focus on the outside or the inside? The shape or the contents? The color or the artwork? I tend to move from the obvious to the less so–my refrigerator is black with a bottom freezer. It’s littered with photos - mostly of children, artwork - mostly by children, funky magnets, and the phone numbers of six different pizza restaurants. A pig-shaped bowl made of lava sits on top of my refridgerator.
I have no idea what, psychologically, this says about me. But it’s intriguing, for some reason.
My desk is more interesting than my fridge. My desk represents, to me, the one small bit of space in the house that is truly mine, besides my underwear drawer.
My desk is a small, old-fashioned wooden one with a drop-down desktop. My grandparents gave it to me for my 12th birthday. It sits in the corner of my living room, next to the front window. Out of the window, I can see two large dogwood trees, lots of liriope, a pink peony, and my Honda hybrid. And, today, the neighbor’s recycling bins.
On the top part of my desk is a lamp, also gifted me by my grandparents. The lamp consists of a pillared gold base upon which sits the bronze statue of a child, draped in a toga. The child holds an open book in one hand and a pencil in the other.
Above my desk is a framed silkscreen print from Sri Lanka of an elephant. It was a wedding gift from a friend of Enviro-spouse’s who married a Sri Lankan woman.
On my desk are more gifts, including: a basket packed full of monogrammed note paper, two small leaf-covered journals bound with twine, a silver and glass, flower-shaped vase stuffed with turkey feathers, clay figures of a bird and of a cheetah with a baby cheetah on its back (I only know that’s what it is because my daughter made it), a lucky three-legged Chilean pig, a clay nest containing five clay eggs (made by my son), a pig-shaped frame which holds a photo of my kids.
The non-gifts on my desk include: a tray of writing implements, a bowl of paper clips, several reporter’s notebooks, a digital camera, and various piles of to-dos, notes, and ideas. And, of course, my laptop.
Next to my desk, on the floor, are piles of papers, files, newspapers, a basket full of business cards and contact numbers, and a printer. I’m sitting on a glorious, but dilapidated, dining room chair, part of a set that was in my grandparents’ home. The stuffing is coming out of the seat. I often find large wads of cotton stuck to my backside.
I have no idea what’s in my desk drawers.
This is my corner.
Yours?
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Two compute screens, lamp, phone, electric stapler. 1 pen. That’s it. All neatly arranged and aligned in right angles. I’m really really really anal that way.
Jackt, that is jackt up. You need some clutter in your life and EM has some you can borrow! Whoa! My desk has LOTS of toys on it here at work. A talking Donald Trump doll is one of my favorite toys, but I also have this punching Abraham Lincoln doll that has boxing gloves on and it’s a puppet so you can make him punch people.
I have a couple of Kermit the Frogs, I collect Hackey Sacks - the knitted kind and I make a point to get one now when I travel. The most recent one is from Hawaii.
I have lots of Mavericks photos and memorabila on my desk and a huge Web Ex beach ball.
I do BlackBerry training for a living and so I have 5 broken blackberries on my desk, one pager, and one Treo 600.
I also have a tigger that someone gave me that sings and dances and an Eat More Chikin cow from Chick-Fil-A.
You missed something - the two glass leaves that are dangling from your basket. XD
I don’t have a desk, and my stuff is strewn all about the house. I am working on clearing out a corner, and a friend has promised to make me a desk. We’ll see when that happens.
Desk at home - old wooden desk in the den (which I am trying to get people to call the library); computer sits there with current bills, book (Simpler Living, Compassionate Life); above the desk on the wall is a beautiful painting from China that is matted and framed. Little boring - but two beautiful windows nearby which get lots of sunlight
Desk at work - from all I hear, much neater than my predeccesor’s; phone; laptop; directories; folders for current projects; bulletin board over it; big window where I can see the student center and the large lawn in front of it; oh - some personal pics including one of Book Group Amelia Island ‘04
Actually, Autumn, the glass leaves that you sent me are now dangling from the kitchen window so the sun can strike them and throw rainbows across the room.
They’ve moved in that last couple weeks!
Desk at work - Piles of stuff, only neatly arranged or cleared the day before any vacation. I can, however find everything. There is the service awards pile, the environmental follow-up pile so I don’t go to jail, lots of pictures of B.O.Y. and W.I.F.E. There is also the required motivational picture, but mine is the Sun Tzu quote about ass-kicking, so I try to differentiate myself from the others who try to “inspire”. A couple white boards and pictures of recovery boilers inner workings complete the ensemble.
Home - I have been driven out of every cool desk once W.I.F.E. realizes I have set up a cool desk. I now work exclusively in the garage, where the 386 computer we bought 12 years ago is the music server and tracker of oil changes. All of the “desks” (benches) here are covered with tools and 1/2 done projects, but now that the media room is complete, I am catching up on these!
At home Mr. & I share a “partners” desk from the forties. It’s heavy oak and the surface is filled on both sides- his by computer/ technology driven stuff and his work, since this is where he runs his business from, and my side is covered in stacks of books and magazines with a little space in the middle to write a note. I have taped a bunch of postcards on the back of Mr.’s screen to look at when I’m at the desk. My laptop (and me) live on the couch in the living room. Too much clutter in the office to work- hahahahaha.
Work desk is neatly arranged with computer, radio, and phone in one corner, my pending file on the other, and work in neat stacks in between (it is a large desk). I have a clear writing pad that has pic’s of the pups, a “Don’t Mess With Texas” sticker, and a cow painting stuck under it. I have various date stuff and lists taped to the wall next to it.
EM:
Your desk space is your own? Wow. Such luxury.
I have a 36″ wide computer desk stuck in the corner of the study slash TV room slash kid’s play room. It’s the kind of desk you see for sale at Target for $30 (some assembly required). The kids play at or on the desk much of the time, so it’s completely trashed.
I am considering the use of an indoor invisible fence to keep them away, but alas I am informed that this may be illegal under existing North Carolina law.
Under the table-top is an old dual processor graphics workstation which I use as part of a testbed network. Big, blue, noisy, and hot. Definitely not Energy Star rated. It shares dust with a Brother HL-5040 laser printer with 10 sheets of paper and half a tank of toner remaining. These two items are insulated by masses of fallen paper, mail, cables, and other detritus I cannot identify.
My laptop, second monitor (17″ ViewSonic CRT), PC speakers, halogen lamp, scattered CDs and DVDs, KVM switch, SCSI tape drive, 8 port HP 10/100 ethernet switch, and a cup of tea (cup hand thrown by a potter friend of ours) live slapdashed on the tabletop and on a small riser platform intended for the monitor alone.
I think I see my lost checkbook under some papers over to one side.
Every other object on the desk — I have no idea what most of them are — is A Chokable Thing tossed out of reach of the one year old, who tries to kill himself every day by ingesting literally whatever non-food item might fit in his mouth. Nails. Bits of board. Plant scraps. Kitty poop. Whatever.
There are no uncluttered inches anywhere, which drives me absolutely insane.
More interesting is what’s missing.
Above the desk — straight above the second monitor and out of reach of the children — is a large blank spot on the wall…probably 40″ x 80″ or so. It’s painted light beige like the inside of a cheap envelope. Most of the house is this color and we hate it, but have neither time nor money at the moment to do anything about it.
This blank space is All Mine.
Depending on the day, that space fills itself with any number of imagined motivating or interesting images. Some days it’s Harry Truman, either his “wise president” photo or his famous “Fuck You Dewey” picture with the newspaper.
Other days it is Rev. James Lawson, or perhaps Martin Luther King or John Lewis. Bob Moses shows up more frequently these days, as does John Doar. The positive potential for humanity in a bloody unjust world.
Once in a while Ezra Pound or TS Eliot pop up, as do Edward Abbey, Leo Tolstoy, Henry Thoreau, or very occasionally Jimmy Carter.
Today it’s Ezra Pound, probably because I fell asleep last night reading The Cantos.
Some days a map appears. Recently, it’s been a remembered version of a groovy American map published by the USGS showing all Federal and Indian lands in all 50 states, color coded by type of land.
Interesting, EM, that you should mention that Sri Lankan image you have. Are you sure that it’s a screen print? I lived in Sri Lanka for a time and saw lots and lots of exquisite batik work there, but almost never a screen print (they surely exist…I just never saw them).
Cheers,
JA
Since I have no clue what the difference is between batik and silk screen, JA, you’re probably right. Regardless, it’s a piece of cloth with a picture of an elephant on it.
I also should mention that I, too, am losing my ONE place to my kids, who often want to use laptop. But they’ve learned to ask. In fact, when I came down for breakfast one morning recently, the first thing my youngest said was: “Mommy, Daddy used your computer without asking!” Good little boy!
i live in my corner.
My desk is really a table with the phone, the computer, the disk drive, the hub, the scanner, and my precious old Rocket all connected. :^)
One chair is stacked with my current work-in-progress and my next work-in-progress. Stacked on the table is my thesaurus along with several other books, a stack of e-mails, and a stack of printed photos.
Daughter #1 is visiting, so her laptop is next to the scanner. Gotta share my space sometimes.