Messy Desk

April 14 2020

The messy desk

accretes imperceptibly.

Strata by strata

like sedimentary rock.

Or an archaeological dig,

layer by layer

unlocking its past.

Burrowing down

through its books and papers

and lapsed invitations,

unanswered letters

forever stamps.

Its buried treasures

and unpaid bills.

Along with pencils, erasers

a broken stapler,

an old paper-weight

uncounted loose change.

There's a busted trophy

that might have been bowling

his name and team engraved.

As well as a handsome mug

where a dried brown ring remains.

And a small open space

for legal pad or laptop.

Which he forgot to turn off, and is over-heating,

its coffee-stained keyboard

and flickering screen.

According to chaos theory

and the law of entropy

and the general state

of disintegration

of a dizzying world spinning faster and faster

it might as well be burned.

But the high-powered cortex

of its human custodian

has it all meticulously mapped;

do not touch a thing, he commands

I can put my hands

on whatever whenever I want.

He is a detail man,

a cartographer of ephemera

with a photographic eye.

Like the squirrel

burying acorns at random

yet still keeping careful track,

who can last a hard winter

parcelling-out its precious horde.

A detailed map

of essential geography

in its tiny rodent brain.

And a somewhat muddled man

whose socks don't match

and who can't remember names,

but keeps an exact catalogue

of his messy desk.

Which is not to be touched

dusted

or disturbed

he insists,

the glasses he's been searching for

pushed to the top of his head.

It was brought to my attention that a messy desk may be a sign of creativity.

There may be some observational data that support this. I can certainly rationalize the opposite: that a preference for order (or perhaps better imagined as discomfort with disorder), an undue attention to appearance, and the desire to conform with conventional expectations of neatness suggest a mind that wouldn't easily draw outside the lines, as well as a mind that is more oriented to external sources of judgment and validation than internal ones.

All I can say is that as I've become less of a clean freak, I've also become more creative. I write at my dining room table (at which no dining ever takes place, except for hot black coffee and doggie treats) and it is a bit of a mess. Only trouble is, while I think I know where everything is and that nothing ever gets lost or overlooked, that isn't really true!