Change of scenery

I am moving out of my office/bedroom, where I have created stuff for the last 10 years, and into another bedroom, in part because I have new/old furniture. My current office will be transforming into a bedroom.

The centerpiece of my new workspace is this fine rolltop computer desk — I think it’s real oak or at least maple, because Red and I struggled to move it by ourselves when we picked it up last weekend. We were saved by two brawny lads who did the heavy lifting for us. There were a couple of tricky lifts required to get it out of the house where the estate auction had been held, but these guys hardly broke a sweat.

We’ve kept the desk in the garage for a few days while we prepare for the big move. Stuff needs to be packed for the big 20-foot transfer from one side of the house to the other, and we also have one other piece of new/old furniture to pick up this weekend: A 10-foot-wide, 79-inch-high entertainment center/bookshelf unit, actually five units that live together.

You may think we’ve splurged on a fancy-schmancy collection of office furniture so I can act like a big-shot author as I head into my old age, but it’s nothing of the sort. We have become fans of a online auction site called CTBIDS.com — C.T. for Caring Transitions — that helps people sell off their belongings when they downsize or otherwise decide they don’t need so much stuff anymore.

At the same time a whole lot of people are not looking for stuff these days. Collectibles and the like see a lot of action. Furniture, not so much.

As a result I got this tremendous desk, which easily will serve for the rest of my life, for $6. Six bucks! And the big wooden bookshelves? I put one dollar down and no one outbid me. We’ve gotten some remarkable deals through CTBIDS, but this is the most amazing pair of acquisitions to date.

I find myself imagining the wonders I will create sitting at the finest desk I’ve ever owned, but I can’t necessarily say that will happen.

One of our local school districts is asking voters for permission to build a new middle school to replace the outdated existing building, which despite hard work to keep it up has become a rambling wreck, parts of it dating to 1917 and most of it dating to 1957. One skeptic asked the superintendent why they’re not pushing the idea that a new school would improve kids’ education.

“I’m not sure that you can necessarily say that because I walk into a room that provides me better lighting, it provides me better aesthetics, I’m not sure that I can look at you and say that automatically going to improve scholastic aptitude or outcomes in students,” the superintendent wisely said. “I will say that it provides more opportunities.”

I wrote my first novel on a Commodore 64 and didn’t complete a second novel with until after the Macintosh, Windows 7 PC and iMac that succeeded it had come and gone, so I know the nifty new desk won’t increase my productivity or spark my imagination. But I will say that it provides a better environment and more opportunities.

CTBIDS is a franchise operation, so you probably will find some local auctions if you check it out. It’s unusual to get deals quite this ridiculous, but I heartily recommend giving it a look. Assuming I survive packing, moving and unpacking all of my stuff, I look forward to reporting back on the new digs.

Moose call

Somewhere over my head, I heard the call of a moose.

“Hey!” he called with a flourish. “Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.”

I rolled my eyes. “That trick never works.”

“This time for sure!” he cried. “Here’s the secret: Don’t think, just write.”

“Oh, please,” I said. It was close to midnight and a dark and dreary time, while I pondered, weak and weary, over a quaint and curious volume I was attempting to write, and the last thing I wanted was another piece of advice. “You keep coming by to chat, but you always say the same thing — “Don’t think!” — but I keep thinking.”

“No doubt about it,” said the moose, “I gotta get another chat.”

So there I was, reaching into the ether, trying to drag a story kicking and screaming into this plain of existence, and the characters were there and the setting was there and the motivations were there, except my own motivation — I didn’t care, and if I didn’t care, how was I going to get you to care?

“Stop worrying about it,” the moose said. “Just write.”

I sighed. “Don’t you see that I’m writing?”

“Meh,” said he. “Your fingers are moving and words are coming out on the page, but that ain’t writing, that’s the way you do it.”

“What do you suggest?” I challenged.

“I dunno. You’re the writer. I’m just a moose.”

And with that, he just stopped talking. I have waited here each night since then, waiting for the inspiration, waiting for the moose to speak again. He had to be joking, didn’t he? He saw me write, he saw the words come out, how could he say that it wasn’t writing? What did he mean by that?

Yeah, that must be it. He was telling a bad joke, trying to make me laugh and start telling the story I was born to tell.

What story is that? I’m glad you asked. Once upon a time …

The moose grinned. “I guess I don’t know my own strength.”

All these years I’d been hearing it wrong. It turns out, when I sit down to write, I need to invoke the moose.

Two cows on a shelf

The cows smiled as they surveyed all that they could survey. It was a cluttered panorama with papers and wires scattered everywhere but, paradoxically, books arranged in a certain order and movie posters neatly placed on the wall.

“It’s as if he can’t make up his mind to be a cluttered mess or obsessive compulsive,” one cow said to the other. The cows didn’t have names because, as an impossible quasi super villain once said, they knew who they are.

“We must have an adventure,” said the other cow.

“Why?”

“Well,” said the adventurer, “there has to be a story to tell about us so people remember who we are.”

“Why can’t we be remembered as the two little cows who sat contentedly smiling on the bookshelf for years upon years and lived happily ever after?”

“Yes, I suppose we could,” said the other. “But something has to happen to make it a story. That’s what makes it a story: Things happen.”

“I don’t want anything to happen. It means change, and I like things just the way they are.”

“So do I. But wouldn’t an adventure be grand?”

“It depends on the adventure. Some are full of mystery and intrigue and peril, which are three things I’m not terribly fond of.”

“I see what you mean,” the other said. “But this could be an adventure of discovery and beauty and strange new worlds and new civilizations.”

“I’m not sure I like ‘strange.’”

“Now you’re just being contrary. Come on, let’s go.”

“You go ahead. I’m happy right here.”