Today, which is another gloomy, and (yes) snowy spring day, I am here (see above), which is usually where most weekends find me unless I'm sleeping, chilling on the couch, or working on projects that are painty or inky or need space (which happens on the big table in the dining roomc (aka the alice table) or the work table in there. .). I have a laptop, but unless I'm using it to watch movies in the bedroom, it will be found on this desk. While most of my daily writing is happening in the studio lately waiting for printing jobs, here is where the fine-tuning & editing happens. Also where I write most of the blog content. It's actually less of a desk and more of a vanity table I purloined from my mother. It has arms rests and a secret little drawer in the front. She got it second hand from a co-worker when I was in high school, and for awhile it held the cage of a cockatiel we once owned, but even then, I had my eyes on it for future thievery. It was one of the only things I moved into my first apartment as my desk, and then this one, where it initially was my nightstand. (later, when I was having wi-fi issues I moved it to the current location to allow my laptop a direct hookup and it just stayed there. )
I appreciate it's relative smallness, which keeps me from hoarding things on it . (I used to work at the dining room table, but it would get covered in books & art supllies eventually to the detriment of actually, ya know, eating at it.) The little dresser next to it houses anything I need to store away and gives a little extra room, mostly for cats (though Moxie has firmly planted herself on the desk/my left arm while I'm typing at the moment) The cabinet is one of two (the larger holds my tv.) lovely mid-century avocado green pieces procured from Goodwill when i first moved in. That one holds the record player and underneath, a collection of cds I no longer really use as well as things lke photo albums and scrapbooks. While my tall poetry shelves are across the room, those bookshelves are the fiction ones and sort of a catch-all for randoms or things I like to consult occasionally as well as a handful of records (my collection is small--I've only had the player a couple years, but it's mostly bossa nova and some Patsy Cline.) I am a mad fan of vintage office chairs and this is one of my favorites and probably the one in my apartment in the best condition.
Smaller touches are my big french cat poster, my mini-camera collection, right now, a stack of poems on the green cabinet since I've been working on parceling some things together. Weekends like this usually find me planted most of the day here. If it requires less concentration, I can turn my television in this direction and watch Netflix while I work. Right now, my space heater is humming away about two feet away as it has been the entire winter and seems doomed to sometimes for eternity.
Today, I am working on revisions for the "artist statement" pieces before I start sending them out in submission and maybe writing some more posts for this week's blogging endeavors. I'm making headway on the library memoir-ish project and will be sharing more of that as I go. With feed out of the house and in submission, I've been idly looking at that next configuration of a book and seeing what it might need before it's complete. (dark country is the book that will bring together the more narrative projects like taurus, the slender man poems, exquisite damage, and the older series, beautiful, sinister. ) It needs a couple more things to be complete, though, but I'd like to have all the ducks in a row by fall.
