Desktop

I'm quite fond of my new desk. It's in the bedroom between two windows (more on the view later) and it's one of those folding tables people rent for events. I bought it from Amazon for something like $39.00 and what's great about it is the size--about six feet long, some kind of pebbly grey-ishwhite plastic surface on grey metal legs. At one end there's a computer screen my son salvaged for me. I use it when I'm proofreading a book manuscript: I can have my original translation text on one screen and the copy-edited manuscript on my laptop. Or vice versa. But right now the extra screen has two postcards taped to it: a Chardin still life I am particularly fond of from the Louvre, and a Cezanne postcard I also like (of his wife, full frontal, sitting in a chair). And also a sheet of paper with Goya's 'Third of May 1808'. Quite a different kettle of fish, Goya, as compared with Chardin or Cezanne. I like to think about how they can be so different and so great.

In front of the screen there is a pile of books, never mind which, then a goose-neck lamp from Ikea that looks like a mike, a tangle of cables, a two-volume Webster's Universal Dictionary of the English Language (A-LITH and LITHISTIDA-ZYX) from 1937. I took it from my parents some years ago. It is leather bound, in red and an orangey-yellow, with a lot of Moorish-looking tooling. The pages are yellow and have a good old-book smell. It's not pristine, it looks as if it had been used. Occasionally it's useful for some historical research, but otherwise I mostly use my computer's dictionary. In Paris I have an OED compact, but that's another story. The dictionaries are propping up the ten or so books I need for book reviews that haven't yet appeared in print, and a bunch of Poetry Book Society bulletins that I keep there because I haven't really figured out where else to keep them and I'm afraid I might forget where I put them otherwise. Then there are some file folders in which I try to keep the disorder of my correspondence, bills, charity solicitations, at bay, and then a printer, which is out of ink at the moment.

That's the back layer. The front layer: printer paper, both fresh and already-printed-on-one-side. A stapler. A letter from a French organisation telling me they received my change-of-address in the Etats-Unis-d'Amerique. A glasses case without any glasses but with a soft cloth for keeping them clean. A cup with pens and pencils and a pair of scissors with yellow handles. More cables. A place for my laptop, which is on my lap.