“If thou could’st empty all thyself of self, Like to a shell dishabited…” – Sir Thomas Browne
The background image on my laptop is a picture of a desk. The white paint that originally covered the writing surface has long since chipped and peeled off, the wood stripped to the grain, the left front corner stained a darker brown from a cup of coffee injudiciously placed. A dusty round clock sits on the top-right corner, reading four-eighteen, though you can tell that it hasn’t worked for years. The top-left corner is occupied by a simple brass lamp, missing a shade, its naked bulb exposed. S
ome papers are crumpled between the back of the desk and the windowsill, as if someone had lost patience with what the papers had to say.
Rising behind and above the desk is a bay window which stretches from one side of the frame to the other, dividing the world outside into what can be captured in the regularly spaced panes and omitting the rest. At the center of the window, just above the far edge of the desk is one large pane, cracked open so that the light falling on the desk dissects it into sharp abstract shapes. The space in the picture is pregnant with possibility; it stands boldly empty displaying the vestiges of a previous owner’s thought processes, tastes, and life. This could have been Tennessee Williams’ desk or Virginia Woolf’s. Perhaps, I think to myself, as the photograph hovers, visible at the borders of the paper I am typing, today I will write something good.
