Someone messaged me today to say she envied my new newly re-organized and cleaned up office, and I had to smile. She said it looked so peaceful. I am sorry to say it is anything but peaceful, even though I love it and am delighted with the changes we made over the weekend.

I am fortunate to have a wife and partner who loves to undertake projects like this, it’s like living with Wiley E. Coyote, she is a dervish, hauling  tables and books around, filling trash bags, organizing trips to the dump and Goodwill.

Maria says it bothers her to see my office looking like hoarders live there, she can’t rest until messes are cleaned up and junk is hauled out of the house. I obliged, we hauled big bags of garbage to the dump and a carload of stuff from Goodwill.

Offices are a great challenge for me, my Dyslexia never makes itself felt or seen more intensely than in my office, where I am simply unable to keep books in place, or papers stored, pens piled up,  my desk uncluttered with symbols, muses, papers and printouts.

Maria told me last week that apart from vacations, I have written on my blog or my computer every night since she had known me. I said this couldn’t possibly be true. She laughed and said it was absolutely true.

I didn’t believe it, i still don’t. But here I am, heading for 11 p.m., writing. More Dyslexia, I imagine, it has worked for me in many ways.

Maria is amazing to see in action, but we both know this office will not look like this in a few weeks, or even days. Taking my study apart is actually quite  frightening for me, I can’t breathe normally, and the panic bubbles up and tightens my stomach, and makes me sweat.

Nothing stirs up the Dyslexia more than filling out spaces, tracking wires, and throwing out things I saved and might need. I hate this, but am grateful to love someone who cares about me enough to help me sort it out when things get crazy.

Everybody knows this, so the work is done in a determined, rushed and experimental way. Maria wrote about it on her blog today.

This all began when we went to a restoration shop in town called Shiny Sisters looking for a new table for my office, I don’t remember for what or where. I saw this 150-year old British Partners Desk with a $225 price tag on it and I said I wanted to buy it, and Maria said logically, but you already have a desk.

This was so, I said, but I would love to have this desk. And then her wheels began to spin and she was already thinking of how to re-organize my study. When she gets going, it is like watching a tornado race across the plains.

She said but I had a desk, and I said this should be my desk, it practically shouted at me to take it home.

This is a very good move for me, the kind of thing that focuses me, stirs the creative spark and makes it easy and comfortable for me to write. I paused tonight and said some silent prayers for my new desk and welcomed it into my life.

I think we will make some beautiful words together.

it is dark and solid and funky and reeks of character and  history. A writer’s  desk for sure.

I winced when I thought of the amount of work and disruption that would be needed to get all the stuff out of my office, so this could come in and we would re-arrange my two farm tables around it. So that’s what we did, a friend came over to help, but like me, she mostly watched in shock as Maria tore all over the place in a blur moving things and hauling them out.

So I love my new study, sorry Sheila, it will never be a peaceful place but it is a creative place, and I will work hard and continuously to keep it orderly and rational for as long as I can. Tonight, I am quite at home in here, Red sleeping at my feet, I’m planning to head for Albany in the morning to write a check to help an Iraqi couple in trouble keep their electricity from being shut off.

More to come.