The puzzle

This was bound to be one of those decisions that are frequently made, but, for a long list of different reasons, rarely kept: I decided to tidy up the chaos I call my room.

Only, this once, the reason that kept me from pulling through was not the usual too-tired-bored-mood-less nonsense, but a sudden brain flash that struck me as I was trying to make sense of my desk. What was it that was going on there, exactly?

A precarious pile of a vast variation of things, disparate items lying there, waiting with Job-like patience for me to put them into some kind of order. Order out of chaos. As I was looking, trying to decide the best place to start squaring away, that was when it hit me: everything I loved, all the preoccupations that kept me busy and sane were there on display, like a live journal of my every-day life.

Just odd, all the inanimate objects that seemed to be so indicative of my likes and dislikes, loves and obsessions, practices and habits, all in one place. The contents of my head, the instruments that help compose my life’s tune.

A file of both old and new sketches next to my sketchbook, flanked by pencils, erasers, sharpeners, the full complement of utensils for my very favorite preoccupation. I spend hours with these in my hands, illustrating the images flooding my brain. Or at least trying to.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula, half-read, no bookmark. I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to find where I’ve left off when I care enough to pick it up again.

Notebooks with rough drafts of future writings and vocabulary notes- futile attempts to keep remembering things I’ve looked up in my dictionary. Right on top of it, the aforementioned dictionary, haggard-looking, about to fall to shreds from years and years of extensive use.

Two pairs of compasses, in my possession for a good fourteen years –from back in the day I used to be a student- recently used to design a sketch that has gone dramatically awry. I’ll have to give it another try; it’ll be a very interesting study if I ever manage to render it the way it originally introduced itself in my mind.

Higher up on the desk, the decrepit analog camera I had borrowed some eleven years ago from my cousin to participate in a photography class, when digital photography wasn’t even a distant dream in the imagination of its developer-to-be. Note to self: clean it and see if the old monster can still perform its magic.

A dusty cd case, hardly ever opened nowadays -since the day mp3s invaded my hard drive- containing my all-time-favorite rock and metal songs, the kind of music that has the power to turn one’s prosaic day -or night- to a real-life music video, that kind of music that stays with you through the years and brands your heart and soul with an everlasting blazing mark, the very characteristic crest of rock royalty.

My old fart of a stuffed puppy, a wry smile on its cute aged muzzle that hasn’t faded despite its 20 years of torturous squeezing and clenching. My sole companion throughout my own personal dark ages.

Receipts for the IRS. Ugh. Next please.

My swimming goggles, trustworthy protectors of my eyes from chlorine-or-saltwater induced stinging.

Colorful pebbles and tiny sea shells picked out from the myriads of their own kind on the beach from last year’s vacations at the village. Sigh. I have a ton of those, overflowing vases, boxes, bottles, shelves, containers of all sorts, shapes and sizes, yet I can’t make myself to dispose of them. It’s not only that they’re mementos of beautiful, carefree times; it just feels like such a waste, so unfair, to remove something from its natural habitat to have it end up in a dump somewhere. I’ll figure out something appropriate and decent to do with them.

A roll of duct tape. What’s that doing out here? I open a drawer, wedge it in among the rest of my tools.

My wallet. Empty wallet… as it is most of the time lately. Well, empty of money, anyway. I‘d better return it into my bag.

A to-do-list for the next day at the office, scrawled on a torn piece of plotter paper. Grrr…. In the wallet you go. I’ll deal with you later. If I’m in the mood.

Hanged to the side wall, a Robert Pattinson calendar - gift from my friend B. from Georgia, already flipped to August -though it’s still only early July- since my favorite photo of his meticulously tousled hair is on that page. I can’t help but grin looking at that calendar. Girl, you know we’re both stray-jacket crazy.

Just above, a shelf crawling with other people’s thoughts, the fruit of ingenious creativity: my favorite books. Stephen King, Umberto Eco, Dan Brown, Frank Herbert, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne… Stephenie Meyer. “Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.” Edward, the original, unfailing source of my inspiration.

Farther down the shelf... more dictionaries, architectural construction manuals, Van Gogh, Dimitris Pikionis, Lenos Christidis, Christos Vakalopoulos, Nikos Kazantzakis, Konstantinos Kavafis, Odysseas Elytis… I pause there for a moment. “Πουθενά δέν πάω, μ’ ακούς / Ή κανείς ή κι οί δύο μαζί, μ’ ακούς / Ποιός μιλεί στά νερά καί ποιός κλαίει - ακούς; / Ποιός γυρεύει τόν άλλον, ποιός φωνάζει - ακούς; / Είμ’ εγώ πού φωνάζω κι είμ’ εγώ πού κλαίω, μ’ ακούς / Σ’ αγαπώ, σ’ αγαπώ, μ’ ακούς.” (I go nowhere, hear me / it’s neither of us or the both together, hear me / Who speaks in the waters and who cries, do you hear? / Who seeks the other, who calls out, do you hear? / it is me who calls out, it is me who cries, you hear me / I love you, I love you, hear me.)

And in front of this mosaic of diverse books, just before the edge of the shelf, three photos. Mother and father, black and white from back in the sixties, an era when things seemed to be much simpler, and in the very center my brother wearing his bushy hair 80’s style. It actually was the 80’s when this was taken. He was 17 and absolutely carefree then, he looked radiant. The plinth and pillar of my personality’s structure.

I pull back one step, my eyes drifting downward once again. I know what this is. It’s a puzzle of my existence, each item a separate piece, different but with its own special place in the whole.

Even the desk, a draftsman’s desk, tilted slightly forward. How many nights haven't I spent right here, bent over this very desk, eavesdropping on late night radio shows while drawing with draft pens the schematic of the future I wanted for myself. It was here when one night, after a rejection of monumental proportions, I got dead drunk on Southern Comfort and wrote a ridiculously corny, whiningly mellow and totally trite letter to someone that didn’t even remotely deserve it, and then threw it away. Looking back now, that night was an awful waste of brain cells. Southern Comfort, despite the quantity consumed, gave me absolutely no comfort. The existence of the desk somehow did. It’s my spot. My place.

I don’t understand how all these pieces of my life ended up together at the same time at the same place. It’s probably because I always try to fit everything in my very much restricted 24 (-6hrs of sleep) hours. Work, family and friends, research, various recreational preoccupations -means of expression and venting, reading, sports, more work, more stuff…. And where does housework and tidying add up in all this? Nowhere, apparently. Not now. I think I’ll leave the artistic collage of a puzzle intact for the moment, it’s nice to know I lead a full life.
Even in its disparity.