Take me to your desk

All for the love of a good work space. Please, god, let me one day know such a place again.




I still go back there, sometimes. To that desk of his spread out before me, its sheet of green blotting paper worn smooth, softly crinkled. The tape recorder and the black keyboard gathering dust between the keys. The blank computer screen stationed at the edge of the desk is small, grey, out-dated. It sits there like a pupil awaiting instructions, looking at you with the stare of an ex-wife or an abandoned son. Imaginative spaces, blanks to be filled in forever and ever. Finally, I always find myself savouring the smallest details, things I doubt he ever noticed or took delight in. There is the cool green shade of the banker’s lamp, the dark smudges left around its base, its neck, and even on the brass ligatures of the light switch. Also the rough waxy grain you felt whenever you put your fingers deep enough into the carved out handles of the desk drawers.