There’s nothing really cozy about the place I blog from. If I were more pretentious, I’d call it the Den. Or the Study. Or the Office (which is actually kind of close to what it embodies, this room). I can’t really refer to it as the Library since there are books in every other room in the house, and this room doesn’t even win for most. It has a desk but no one studies at it. It has a rocking chair, but it’s not very comfortable. It’s the guest room when my mom is here and a sort of every-room for storing things that don’t belong elsewhere, but mostly we call it the computer room and leave it at that. Which, however, implies that the computer is the most important, and defining, item in the room. It’s true. Its big square eye is the focal point for everyone who comes in and sits down at the farting desk chair that squeaks and puffs when you seat yourself and when you rise and during every shift and wiggle inbetween.
Things in front of me on the desk where I blog: a tiny lamp with a yellow shade which darkens to orange at the top edge. An old Win Schuler restaurant cheese crock that corrals pens and a mini-Swedish flag. A framed, handwritten list of Regler för datorn* agreed to by Karin and Martin and signed off by Anders and I, after we got tired of the constant bickering and threatened a lifetime unplug fest. She wrote it in pencil and signed it PEACE!!! in big fat letters. The exclamation points are inverted triangles poised precisely over fat circles.
Piles of neatly-stacked CDs from a paused project. A plastic holder for paid bills and Very Important Papers. A framed photo of Martin & Karin from our 2007 trip Stateside when Karin’s hair was cut short to her jawline, making her head really round and Martin was just starting to shoot up. A huge block of glass that is colored orange with a green glass lizard embedded in it; a gift from a long-ago online reader who attended the LJ sleepover I hosted years ago. She never posts anymore.
On one wall is a metal facsimile of the patent Anders was awarded in 1996. It says Anders Ek, Inventor. The patent was for a Delayed Safety Braking Apparatus For A Servomotor Control System. Cool. On another wall is a watercolor painting of my old cat Tish, that I did in 1982. I signed it twice, just to be sure it was clear who the artist was.
Succulents in the windowsill. Basic IKEA style. A brass dragon candlestick won at an antique auction when my dad was still alive. Behind me, shelves of books. This room is where I keep reference, non-fiction, biographies, poetry, language, natural history, art, travel. It’s kind of a soul-less room, though. The furniture isn’t comfortable. It needs a makeover, a lift, a CARPET, I don’t know…something.
But it’s not really where I blog from, this shared and functional family repository.
Here I am, inside my skull, where my dreaming mind sings quietly to itself. Where the words stutter or pour, depending on the day. Where the fits and starts may scrabble and pull their way from an unclear cocoon of ideas to a winged thing that flies off in a direction I never expected. From my words and from my art. From my head and from my heart.
Flat-out COVETING: Wall garden
*Rules for the computer