In all of the years I’ve been writing, I’ve never had a lamp I really loved, a lamb that had character, that shone in the right place, that wasn’t too hot or too dim or too bright. I’ve been through a lot of lamps, every house I have lived in is littered with them. My office is a nest of old farm tables – the newest is 150 years old – candles  – my desk is like the altar of a Catholic Church or Tibetan Temple, camdles burning all around me while I write.

Last week, Maria and I were browsing through an old second-hand shop in Brattlelboro, Vt., when I came across this lamp, it was a black old industrial desk lamp, a black lamp with a neck that moved, a curved black hood that cast the right amount of light in just the right place. “Oooh,” I said and before I could say anything else, Maria swooped it up and bought it for me as an anniversary present.

The wires were as old as the lamp and were coming apart. I called my friend Jack Macmillan who is able to fix just about anything that does not involve flying or climbing up a tree and he took it home. Two days later he brought it back, re-wired and safe and ready to go. I am very lucky to know Jack, he is the Godfather of Bedlam Farm.

The lamp cost $50, it was the cheapest lamp I have ever bought and it is the best, and there is a lesson there, for sure.  I can not tell you how happy I am with it, how it has changed the whole feeling of my office, how it has inspired me to write in a joyful voice. When I got home from Vermont, I did something I have not done in two years, I cleaned off the three old farm tables that form one beautiful horseshoe desk for me – the wood was buried under papers, books, discs, magazines. I threw everything into two or three big bags, threw them into the garbage – I had ordered and read a score of books about horses, I was shocked to see –  and made room for my lamp,  I put the lamp right on my desk where I needed it to be.

I learn almost every day that good things happen when I am  ready for them, not necessarily when I decide I want or need them. I have waited for my lamp for decades, it reminds me that the things I really want will find me when they – and I – are ready.