A Free Desk and Not Much Else to Say

We were just trying to get quarters to do laundry and there it was: a blonde dresser with great handles and some chevron carved drawers that lost their handles. Chloe and I took on the project. First we yanked the drawers out, and then hoisted the rest of the body to our front gate. We left it there because we still needed to get quarters. On the way back with a hundred dollars worth of laundry change, just kitty corner of the dresser there was a desk. It was sticky and dusty and clearly dropped on its right corner. The handles had a cheap gold sheen to them, but they jut out in a cool mid century way. The desk has a metal frame and drawers and is heavy duty to a degree, but the veneer and gilded handles knocked it down a notch. I liked it. So, for the second time in the span of an hour we amputated drawers and then moved the rest of the body to our courtyard.

I got a new desk that someone was trying to throw away.  It is bigger than my old one, which was a children’s school desk from the 1960s, thus child sized. My partner in acquisition, Chloe, helped me hoist and clean and maneuver this adult sized desk back to our place. The desk now has taken residency in my room, leaving me to feel settled in a place that is furnished by hand me downs and a savings account.

In the two weeks of being back in San Francisco, it has rained a fair amount and I am starting to get stir crazy. Like in the song that borrows my name, “Caroline says while biting her lip, ‘life is meant to be more than this and this is a bum trip.’” I am in the in between moment where I am saying yes, because there is no good reason to turn down anything when you yourself don’t really have anything else pertinent going on. Which has meant a lot of nights go later than expected. New friends are made and an agenda of the day is determined by other people. It is too easy to be young, skate by on a few winks of sleep, and kiss strangers. Things start to feel like they just happen because of circumstance, not coincidence, but fun is fun.

So, I sit behind—or in front, depending how you think of it—my new desk writing whatever this is, mimicking productivity. There are all these things I have that I try to remind myself of when everything feels like zero gravity aimlessness. I sit in my favorite chair facing my desk, drinking coffee out of a comically small Japanese stoneware mug. Hoping all these concrete things can ground me to something and bring me back to Earth and a bi-weekly paycheck. It is fun to float around for a while, but this bum trip is getting a bit old and I really don’t want to overstay my welcome.