John Brown, Antique Desks, and Other Grand Obsessions

I am listening to a great interview with Ethan Hawke on NPR's Fresh Air.  He's talking about John Brown and creativity and how to live a life.

I'm remembering a time years ago when I went to Harper's Ferry with my mom and dad.  We went for the beautiful mountain views, and I came away with a renewed interest in John Brown.  I had heard of him, and I tried to read Russell Banks' Cloudsplitter, which led me to a biography or two.  But being in that place, Harper's Ferry, where John Brown made his last stand--that fired my brain in new ways.

I remember having grand obsessions, some of which lasted for a poem or two, some of which have lasted much of my lifetime.  I feel a bit like I'll never have that experience again, but I know that's false.  I'm trying not to wander into the swamp of despair and regret.

And then, like magic, here's a tweet that came just when I needed it:  “Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it.”― Katherine Mansfield

I am writing at the rolltop desk that was my maternal grandparents until it arrived at my house in 2003.  I wrote the first short story that was anywhere near decent at this desk, back when it was still at my grandparents' house.  I was so happy the day it arrived at my house.  I imagined writing my best work at this desk.

For almost two decades, I never wrote at this desk.  The non-laptop computers we used to have wouldn't have fit on the desk.  Once we switched to laptops, the desk was in a position where I couldn't envision using our bigger office chairs with it.  But as I worked on my smaller desk, the one that my best friend and former housemate left with me when she moved to Durham, NC, I realized that I rarely wrote with my chair rolled up to the desk in a traditional way (that's a complicated way of saying that I have terrible posture when I write).

I wrote some of my best work at that smaller desk. I am now wondering if there is space for both desks in this room, along with the double bed.  This front room is both study/library and guest room--and should we need it, a way to quarantine if one of us gets sick.

I know that one reason I want to keep the smaller desk is that my best friend and former housemate died of a hideous esophageal cancer, and while it makes no logical sense to keep a desk to remember her, it's part of what's going on in my brain.

I am writing at this antique desk which once belonged to my grandparents, and I'm aware of how much my hands sweat when I write.  At the smaller desk, where I wrote for over 25 years, there's a patch of discoloration.  For years, I was hesitant to write at my grandparents' desk for fear of ruining it.

Then Hurricane Irma came.  The window above the desk leaked a bit, but I didn't realize it.  A stack of papers got damp, but I didn't realize it--there was so much more damage that kept me from seeing the smaller damage.  

Months later, I realized that the finish of the desk was ruined in several places, and there's a ripple in the writing surface of the desk.  Sigh.

I feel like it has taken me far longer to recover from Hurricane Irma than it should have:  longer financially, longer in terms of repair, longer mentally.  Perhaps I am still not recovered mentally.  It feels like it takes me far longer these days to do the kinds of things I used to be able to do in a day or two.  It would be convenient to blame that fact on the pandemic, but that's not the whole reason for me.

Let me circle back to that Katherine Mansfield quote.  Let me not get bogged down in despair and a thousand regrets. 

But also, let me get some inspiration from this time.  Let me think about the history of my grandparents' desk, the sermons written here, the letters written here, the artifacts of lives contained here.

Let me think about what I want to create with the time I have left.  Let me think about the world that is struggling to be born.

But let me not give up on the nonviolent ways of transformation.  John Brown shows us the disasters that can come when we put aside our beliefs in nonviolence.