From Whence I Sit

A little of the archaic here in the title. At left, my current mode of work as evidenced by the photo of my desk.

I've written elsewhere that I use a teak table as a desk. I have several teak tables now. I seem to be accumulating them. My office desk is my first which was claimed from a Danish furniture store at deep discount (List $2K back in '2001) after an associate was over-eager with a box cutter. The cut is on a leaf, along the narrow edge of that leaf, and completely invisible when the leaf is concealed - invisible to anyone who isn't feeling with their paws.

It is a great flexible platform and I recommend table and credenza to anyone contemplating desk. You keep too much stuff anyway.

The O.E.D. is a constant companion because I love the thing more than need it. I wanted the compact edition all my undergraduate years and so now I have one. No more Webster's seventh for me. ( my dictionary was 60 years old until the binding gave out and now I make do without - or the internet - or spellcheck. I do occasionally need the definition, though. My vocabulary isn't perfect and neither is anyone else's. I am asking for a new collegiate dictionary for Christmas).

There are a couple of pipes (infrequently smoked and never smoked in the house - moral support devices when I need a boost to the "writer-ly" feeling). A tea cup from last year's outing in Vancouver. A tiki mug full of pens which are extremely important to me. A bottle of Sailor Jentle ink in black. Two pairs of binoculars, a camera, some dice from Binion's Horseshoe in Las Vegas from an especially good night some many years ago.

There's a radio - gasp - a world band shortwave from the pinnacle of electronic design in that field which I mostly use to listen to the Detroit Tiger's baseball game on FM. There's a stack of pipe tobacco that isn't even my favorite pipe tobacco ...it's just a stack that I got out years ago and have kept on the desk as "blending" tobacco when I'm trying something new.

There are half a dozen notebooks of different forms.

I use a "book holder" to prop up my "working copy" 1" 3-ring binder for transcription of parts of this second full prose draft into the laptop running Scrivener.

There's also a box of flies (my day-box of go-to trout flies), a fly threader a close friend gave me this spring, a couple knives of various designs, and a lacquer box a Korean friend gave me upon departure. I hope he is doing grand!

So there it is. The latest Crimespree has Robert Crais describing the photographs of his working office. I'm following him for the inspiration effect.

I'd love to see you workspace. Where do you folks write?