Space To Call My Own

I’ve occasionally wondered where great writers write. Do they have a desk in front of a window that overlooks the ocean? Or are they huddled in some dark corner of the attic typing by candlelight? Or possibly in an upstairs office suite downtown where the noises of the street stream in like the light? Or possibly a Hemmingway type might just handwrite some prose on a table at his favorite bar, his paper blotted somewhat by beer spilled from the frosted mug nearby.

Anyway, I’m publishing the photo of my writing space for what it’s worth. It’s in the southeast corner of my basement, which isn’t noteworthy except that I’m safe in case of a tornado. The doodle art on the wall I colored over a quarter century ago. The desk clock is surprisingly accurate, running on a battery at least a dozen years old. My dinosaur of a computer is at least that old too. It can’t connect to the internet and can’t run CDs. I have a newer computer upstairs that can go on-line and has gobs more memory. But there are too many distractions nearby for me to write there.

So here I’ve written stories, blogs, Xmas letters, eulogies, poems, a few short sports articles for the local newspaper, journals, my unfinished movie scripts, e-mails to friends and relatives, my resume, and whatever else I’ve had mind to write over the past ten plus years. I’ve also played about a thousand games of FreeCell.

Oh, about the beads. Those are new this year. I just didn’t have any place else to put them in the house. Most of those my wife and I collected at a Mardi Gras parade in Fairhope, Alabama where the local Knights hurled prizes from their floats to the hordes eagerly gathered there. Mardi Gras actually was celebrated in Alabama first before it became popular in New Orleans. Besides the beads, we managed to snag a plush lobster, a toy football, a Frisbee, and ten or so moon pies. We got pretty good at outleaping the kids. However, after my wife snagged a nifty ring of a half-dozen beads, some lady about our age walked up and grabbed them with one hand, while she took hold of my fuzzy lobster with the other hand. Wendy had to let go of her bead prize, though I wrested loose my little red lobster. Honestly, the greed of some people.