Or perhaps the wee spark of the ghost. An unexpected and unwelcome lack of oomph! has overtaken me for the past few weeks, known poetically as malaise and psychiatrically as dysphoria, which, saying it aloud now, is somewhat poetic in its own right.The reason I purchased a writing desk was so that I could finally have a place dedicated to the purpose, and at the moment it's covered with decidedly un-writing-related flotsam, including the big crinkly plastic Space Bag full of bedding that fell off of the closet shelf one morning and onto my head. I threw it onto the desk to keep the Qat from crinkling it in the middle of the night, which she does because she is evil and the only thing standing between her and world dominance is a lack of opposable thumbs, but its placement there actually indicates my utter distraction from the purpose for which I purchased the desk. The process of burying the desk beneath inappropriate objects--the Serenity DVD, a crescent wrench, nail clippers, two condoms, a waterproof stuff sack, and so on--began when my wireless router died. In order to get online, I had to plug the laptop directly into the modem, which meant sitting on the couch, and the space formerly occupied by the computer quickly became a creativity-sucking astronomical structure, as posited by Hawking.
It's important to keep one's surroundings clear and focused, unless having them chaotic and disheveled actually helps the creative process. For awhile, the desk was an altar, holding nothing but the furniture of writing: computer, books, pens, a thumb-sized nub of Khaibar hashish, a notebook. Stuff happened! Words were slung. Then, a few receipts, casually tossed from emptied pockets. My keys at the end of the day. After my mind had slipped out of gear a bit, the router died. The desk rapidly became just another bit of disorder in a disorderly house, and now here I am after a month with a head full of hot ideas cooled into gray lumps.
But I know how these things work, with me. I feel the embers warming again. I'll clear off the desk and get back to it, and then, O my peeps, I'll tell you all about it, because I'm just fascinating that way.
