The Desk Has Moved Again

The desk is now facing the window. Before that it faced the wall, which was supposed to eliminate distraction, and before that it was at an angle in the corner, which was supposed to be the best of both. None of these configurations has finished the chapter I am working on, which suggests that the desk may not be the problem.

Writers talk about their spaces with a reverence that would seem strange in any other profession. The light at a particular angle, the specific chair, the mug that must be filled before anything is written. I have all of these superstitions and I maintain them faithfully. What I am beginning to suspect is that the superstitions are not there to help the writing. They are there to give the not-writing somewhere to live.

Rearranging the desk is a way of taking the work seriously without doing it. It says: I care about the conditions. I am attending to the environment. Something about this transaction satisfies a part of me that is too frightened to actually open the document and fail at a sentence.

The window view is a plane tree and, beyond it, a brick wall. This is fine. I do not need the view to be interesting. I need it to be there — somewhere for my eyes to go when the sentence is not coming, when the mind needs twenty seconds of grey sky before it can try again. The desk will probably move before spring. The chapter will probably be finished by then too, for entirely unrelated reasons.