An unintended exercise in description
Feb. 16th, 2008 04:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseThere is something very wrong, he’s certain, that to make space for the ashtray on his desk he’s had to move an empty wineglass from beside its place next to a glass candlestick. It’s all very poseur goth. Or at least it would be if the candlestick, red recycled glass clashing gloriously with a substantial part of left over sky blue candle, were there for effect. If he hadn’t been sitting at his desk late into the night quite recently only to be plunged into the absolute darkness of a powercut. He’d been listening to something that probably qualifies as neoclassical Turkish music at the time and the space occupied by the candlestick had been the resting spot for an empty bottle of Czech beer. And then the electricity had died.
He’d sat stunned for a few moments before reaching for the torch that had lived neglected on his desk for quite some time in a vague sense of readiness for such an occasion. And it had been easy enough, focusing the torch’s beam at eye level, to go steal some candles from the living room, shut off the annoying emergency noise that told him that yes, the power had gone out and then go downstairs to dig though some storage boxes for that candlestick. After which he’d sat in the candle light and considered either attempting to read or go to bed. But the power had come back on before cutting out again and then returning stably.
It had been something like a week ago but he’s not found the urge to move the candle so it has sat, taking up much needed space, on a desk mostly populated by books and documents and oddly scrawled on scraps of paper, pens and useless vouchers for some Camel cigarette promotion wedged in amongst the rest break up the landscape for variation. There’s a cardboard divider from a tea box that’s being saved to serve as a bookmark at a later date, the ends of several USB devices sticking out of a little pyrex pot that long ago contained crème brûlée and will likely be replaced with a glass ramekin that contained shop bought tiramisu earlier this evening after it’s been washed. A teaspoon that ought to be washed too, sitting on top of a tub of pistachio halva, a Cadbury’s keyring featuring a reto advert of a Persian cat that looks like it’s about to commit suicide by gramophone, handgrips and a container of handcream that claims to contain glycerine.
The books that are lined up against the meeting of desk and wall are variable; a rather large dictionary, a history of Europe, a selection of Dumas novels, the complete essays of Michel de Montaigne, a pocket legal dictionary, Machiavelli’s The Prince wedged between two small books of German vocabulary, the October 2004 edition of Computer Shopper, saved for some doubtlessly forgotten reason. Though the books stacked up with CD spindle cases at least have a certain thematic to them, being for the most part Ravenloft novels with a Dune prequel at the bottom.
It’s all incongruous in the end, in so far as it forms a garbled sort of narrative. Just like the fellow sat at his desk typing at a ridiculous hour of the morning. The microphone of his headset is pushed back and he only has one of the headphones over an ear like some kind of defunct call centre assistant while he sits cross-legged on his computer chair. Not that he ever seems to spell ‘defunct’ correctly the first time round, he’ll readily admit. But then it’s late, he ought to be in bed and he’s pretty certain that A Hazy Shade of Winter has cycled one time too many while he’s been typing anyway.
He’d sat stunned for a few moments before reaching for the torch that had lived neglected on his desk for quite some time in a vague sense of readiness for such an occasion. And it had been easy enough, focusing the torch’s beam at eye level, to go steal some candles from the living room, shut off the annoying emergency noise that told him that yes, the power had gone out and then go downstairs to dig though some storage boxes for that candlestick. After which he’d sat in the candle light and considered either attempting to read or go to bed. But the power had come back on before cutting out again and then returning stably.
It had been something like a week ago but he’s not found the urge to move the candle so it has sat, taking up much needed space, on a desk mostly populated by books and documents and oddly scrawled on scraps of paper, pens and useless vouchers for some Camel cigarette promotion wedged in amongst the rest break up the landscape for variation. There’s a cardboard divider from a tea box that’s being saved to serve as a bookmark at a later date, the ends of several USB devices sticking out of a little pyrex pot that long ago contained crème brûlée and will likely be replaced with a glass ramekin that contained shop bought tiramisu earlier this evening after it’s been washed. A teaspoon that ought to be washed too, sitting on top of a tub of pistachio halva, a Cadbury’s keyring featuring a reto advert of a Persian cat that looks like it’s about to commit suicide by gramophone, handgrips and a container of handcream that claims to contain glycerine.
The books that are lined up against the meeting of desk and wall are variable; a rather large dictionary, a history of Europe, a selection of Dumas novels, the complete essays of Michel de Montaigne, a pocket legal dictionary, Machiavelli’s The Prince wedged between two small books of German vocabulary, the October 2004 edition of Computer Shopper, saved for some doubtlessly forgotten reason. Though the books stacked up with CD spindle cases at least have a certain thematic to them, being for the most part Ravenloft novels with a Dune prequel at the bottom.
It’s all incongruous in the end, in so far as it forms a garbled sort of narrative. Just like the fellow sat at his desk typing at a ridiculous hour of the morning. The microphone of his headset is pushed back and he only has one of the headphones over an ear like some kind of defunct call centre assistant while he sits cross-legged on his computer chair. Not that he ever seems to spell ‘defunct’ correctly the first time round, he’ll readily admit. But then it’s late, he ought to be in bed and he’s pretty certain that A Hazy Shade of Winter has cycled one time too many while he’s been typing anyway.
