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The Magical Writing Desk
A borrowed rolltop I called home for six mystical years.
April 5th, 2020
New York, NY
The only thing that was in our apartment when we moved in was a large old roll top writing desk, which has become my home.
I sit at this desk for weeks on end drawing and writing and vanishing into my own little world. It was left here by the deceased previous tenant who happened to be the poet laureate of the Lower East Side.
There’s something magical about the desk. I fixed it up with an inordinate number of screws and old nails that I’d found around the place just to hold the thing together long enough to survive the next deadline.
The floors in the apartment are warped and angle towards the middle of the room which meant I had to tether the desk to the wall with a bolt and some twine that I found on Avenue B. If that twine snaps, the whole desk will tip over and crush me. A writer’s death.
It’s rather magical altogether, isn’t it? I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life getting rid of randomly collected furniture, but one glance at this desk makes me want to have one of my very own.
I had a very similar one. It was in my small kitchen with little Cabinet space, and was full of cookbooks and odd cooking implements and a box of 3x5” cards with written recipes and had tons more cookbooks piled on top.
Without it, Jim and I would have starved. Instead, we got pretty porky.