Frivolous Friday, 08.07.2009: Give me the desk, and I shall give you the person

There's actually a semi-serious point to this navel-gazing, so kindly humor me.

Three addresses and fifteen years ago, I picked up a bottle of artist gilding paint at the local Ben Franklin ("local" if you lived in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, anyway). I noticed tonight that it had tipped over on my desk. Being alarmed that its solvents had leaked onto my desk, I removed the lid and inspected the contents. They were--quelle surprise--quite safely and solidly lodged in the bottom. And so that jar just served for basketball practice into the wastebasket, closely followed by the travel-tube of hand lotion whose contents may well have met the same evaporative doom.

Old-fashioned pencils that require sharpening, markers that may or may not have dried, masking tape (important at birthdays and Christmas), a stapler and other sundries reside--as they have for years--in a vase that looks suspiciously like a product of a college Art Dept. But it can't be tossed, because it's a 2nd-place trophy from a speech competition. That the "victory" it represents (in a largely snowed-out tournament) didn't mean much isn't at issue. Why? Because its slightly larger 1st place "sibling" (which *does* mean something, darnitalready) holds disintegrating roses once sent by my husband (and, of course, simply can't be thrown out until they're powder). One cut-glass fob from a chandelier--a token of my mother's faith that I would some day be successful enough to own a house grand enough for a whole chandelier--weighs down random scribbles which possibly hold intelligibility and/or value. The pen-holder assembled from various "gum nuts found in the Australian bush" holds calligraphy pens...and a particularly stubborn pistachio.

Small items--paper clips, binder rings, extra staples, push-pins, brittle rubber bands--and odder things--a tarnished ankle-bracelet, Canadian/British/Irish coins, mis-matched earrings--are distributed between containers as various as an old cold-cream jar, a pretentiously overpriced Neimann-Marcus potpourri jar, and a bit of "Chinese"-looking pottery that probably appealed by my husband's Grandmother because she married a Norwegian farmer, and thus didn't have a choice about taking the white-and-blue ethos to heart. The painted English teacup saucer that belonged to my father's mother holds the oddest assortment of sundries. I need to find a safer home for the origami frog from Geometry class and the origami tulip my husband made before he outgrew that hobby.

There's a dainty sterling pendant--another gift from my mother--in sore need of polishing, which keeps company with a glass trinket-necklace brought home by her father from his "Grand Tour" of France as a WWI "Doughboy." (Mind you, if the house catches fire, it's Grandpa's pendant--i.e. my talisman against whining--that will be saved if it's in my power to do so; Mom already abides with me, probably in more ways than either of us appreciates.)

The afore-mentioned "semi-serious point" of this, though, is to take a good hard look at the "clutter" of your desk. Not the one at work, the one in your "cave." Unless you're a complete neat-nik, it's the Archeology of You. The marginally-useful, and (most especially) the non-functional items are probably the most illustrative of where you came from...and maybe even who you've come to be. Because it's not premeditated, it's a good exercise in introspection, rather than narcissism. Trust me on this: It's worth your time.