sovay: (Lord Peter Wimsey: passion)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2013-11-06 09:36 pm

By the lives that wove the web

I have a desk!

It is a fifty-year-old desk, much scarred with rain stains and tea mugs that aren't mine; my mother believes she was given it for her sixteenth birthday. It has four drawers and a leg that was slightly split once and stabilized with paper tape, now reinforced with aluminum tape. It survived the transit in my brother's car and is now resting in front of the window in my office, which is the room right next to [livejournal.com profile] derspatchel's office. (One of the staircases to the hidden apartment/half-furnished den/studio/we have no idea comes down through my closet.) On it I have placed my laptop, a large blue mug of apple tea, and the antique mermaid lamp that my father restored and painted for my birthday. The grey-green curtain hung across the newly purchased curtain rod is very translucent and does not cover the full width of the window, but at least it keeps me from having to look straight into the kitchen of the neighbors opposite. I would take a picture if I had a camera. My phone is good only for pixellated impressionistic things like this.

(The mermaids curl to either side of a green glass jar stoppered with cork and a sand dollar, filled with ginger chews. They are resting on red-dashed streaks of salad-bright seaweed, with a silvery-blue breaking wave where the inkwell would have fit. One is copper-haired, the other a sort of fair kelp-gold. Their tails are iridescent blue and peacock-green. They are fair-skinned, with pink nipples and red mouths and dark brows; they wear dotted shell necklaces, one more complicated than the other. My father said his goal was to make them look like classic tattoo mermaids and I think Sailor Jerry would have been proud.)

My poem "Clear" has been accepted by Not One of Us. It is less a ghost poem than a poem about people who have to do with ghosts; it is the first poem I've written in this house. It goes with this picture, so if you want to find out, get a subscription now.

A postcard from [personal profile] yhlee arrived this afternoon.
thistleingrey: (Default)

[personal profile] thistleingrey 2013-11-07 03:17 am (UTC)(link)
The desk sounds lovely, patching-up and all. It's nicer to have evocation, I think. Our table-for-eating is a battered teak table with two leaves that aren't in; for a while it was my parents' too-good-to-discard second table and thus left in the patio to be jumped and gnawed upon by nervous dogs, but that meant it was free for me to claim when I went to college. And their proper teak table wasn't built as well and needs a professional's attention to reglue the artsy single base, which has unpeeled itself banana-like, which means it lives in the small garage amidst a pile of junk and may well be discarded sometime.
thistleingrey: (Default)

[personal profile] thistleingrey 2013-11-08 04:31 am (UTC)(link)
*nods* When things are in reasonably good nick, I don't see much point in buying new for the sake of newness. The patina of memory is a fine thing.
spatch: (Default)

[personal profile] spatch 2013-11-07 02:37 am (UTC)(link)
You did a nice job de-spidering the underside of the desk, too.
spatch: (Default)

[personal profile] spatch 2013-11-07 03:04 am (UTC)(link)
Wait, if the webs are metaphorical, what does that make the spiders?

[identity profile] ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com 2013-11-07 05:36 am (UTC)(link)
Congratulations on the acceptance of the very lovely poem!

Congratulations on the desk as well. Your description of the lamp is lovely.

[identity profile] nineweaving.livejournal.com 2013-11-07 05:57 am (UTC)(link)
Yay desk! Yay mermaids! Yay muses!

Nine

[identity profile] snowy-owlet.livejournal.com 2013-11-07 01:34 pm (UTC)(link)
That sounds like the good kind of desk: a desk that has been around a while and has some Opinions.

Ghosts in the drawers, songs in the wood.

[identity profile] snowy-owlet.livejournal.com 2013-11-08 01:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes, boss. ;-)

[identity profile] schreibergasse.livejournal.com 2013-11-07 05:25 pm (UTC)(link)
(One of the staircases to the hidden apartment/half-furnished den/studio/we have no idea comes down through my closet.)

wait what

[identity profile] jinian.livejournal.com 2013-11-07 06:31 pm (UTC)(link)
I concur: pics + blueprints please.

[identity profile] schreibergasse.livejournal.com 2013-11-07 08:45 pm (UTC)(link)
OK, yeah, now I want to visit just to scope out the architectural history.
Anyway, yay finally enough space for books! One day, perhaps I will even attain that myself...

[identity profile] schreibergasse.livejournal.com 2013-11-07 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I had actually forgotten - or never known - that the new flat was...well, not a flat, apparently!
No, I can't see that entry; but only repost if you feel super-motivated.
Edited 2013-11-07 20:43 (UTC)
gwynnega: (lordpeter mswyrr)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2013-11-07 08:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Congratulations on the poetry acceptance and the desk!

[identity profile] ladymondegreen.livejournal.com 2013-11-07 09:31 pm (UTC)(link)
The lamp sounds fantastic. I wouldn't mind an impressionistic pixellated interpretation of that. :)

Congratulations on achieving your spider-free, all functional desk!