A simple shelf can bring such joy to a person with a little bit of an obsession with order. It’s my latest effort to set up a functioning home office.
I’ve tried to explain to Dearest Sweet Partner how having shelves affects me, to much amusement, some derision (the other half of humanity that doesn’t dig being organized as much used to call those of us who are orderly “anal retentive” from some wacked out theory of Freud’s, and now the epithet of choice is OCD), and finally DSP gives me a dutiful “OK” and pat on the head. I can be myself without fear here.
What I didn’t reveal, until now, is what happened to all my shelves. I can still picture them, at least six, tall and white, leaning against a tree, waiting for the trash to get picked up on Mandan Crescent in the ritzy old neighborhood of Madison called Nakoma, one of the many made-up, Indian-sounding names around here (which includes the names of the famous four lakes*). Take two: Leaning against a tree like giant dominoes as I am either getting kicked out or finally moving out from my previous relationship — I think I was moving out (you have to give some Boomers a moment to give context to their picaresque pasts). Yes, that was the fini to the affair.
Shelves mean something to me because when I first set myself up as a writer in Phoenix in the eighties, I had wrap-around shelving on all four walls of my home office. I found it made me feel good to be surrounded — hugged, really — by books, supplies, and other stuff. I still like that motif, although it has been a while since I had it and the Internet is beginning to make many books obsolete.
Anyway, it’s black shelves this time — no bad memories of black shelves!
[Shit, I wrote right through Mass again.]
*Mendota, Monona, Kegonsa, and Waubesa
T.W.I.S.T. by Paul Marshal Zukowski 