I think I’ve written about this before but I can’t believe how messy my writing desk is.
A stack of Glebe Art Show postcards (23-26 June 2022, put it in your diaries), three AA batteries from my replaced doorbell that I need to recycle properly, two facemasks against COVID, a stubby of Coopers Pale Ale (just opened), the torn tag from a worn out pair of Levi jeans to remind me 501 W33 L34, a pair of glasses broken in a fall, sunglasses in a case, a calendar Robinson made for 2022 that arrived this week four months late thanks Australia Post, my passport and a Working With Children Check printout that I need to take to a Service NSW Centre so I can continue with some volunteering I’ve recently started, pens and pencils, Opal cards, cords that are bound to plug into something but I remember not what, or where, Robinson’s elephant book of passwords, nozzles that attach to a hand held vacuum cleaner to tidy up Nina’s dirt tray spill, a desk lamp with a shade from the 1960s when Robinson landed in Australia (hooray!), an inkwell I found in a paddock in Wallington, yellow sticky notes stuck to the wooden desktop, a pile of superannuation letters urging me to review my future, a decorative box holding a jade stamp pad of my Chinese Zodiac Earth Dog from a night market in Hongkong, a black and white ceramic door knob I loved and bought in Myrtleford two years ago with no door in mind, an egg cup with seeds from the Acer palmatum in my garden, a fish fossil in stone that I bought in France and spilled red wine on (the red sea), a part for a telescope for a friend in Braidwood, an 8mb Nikon CompactFlash storage disk from an old camera though which one and why and how it got there I’ve no idea, a stack of notepads, a box of small change…
The desk is this messy partly because it’s where I put things that ‘need attention’. Putting things here is usually as much attention as they get. Beyond that it’s my space. Things end up here, first for a weekend and then forever.
I’m surprised I can write here, often with Netflix tumbling down from upstairs, zombies and Vikings and sad soundtracks to heartbreak and murder.
That’s Life. You hear the din sit amid it. And write it down.
In balance I meditate most days out on the deck, often nude in the endless rain, and share my abandon with the currawongs and lorikeets and the flights arriving from somewhere over the rainbow.
Retirement – if that’s what I’m doing – or repurposing, or renewing, or relenting, is a joyous thing.
AblokeAbroad 