Wow what a nap. Dreaming me and a bunch of my French cousins are Tearin’. It. Up. Running around the dining room table, like we used to do when we were kids. It wasn't my place it was one of the old apartments, full of antique tchotchkes. I didn't seem to care if something got cracked or dropped; my adult self was actually trying to stay out of the way and reposition a couch.

I don't know why I've now got wicked energy. Who knows? I do know that I had a pillow positioned between my knees, chef’s kiss perfectly, so now my hip doesn't hurt. Honestly that's usually what wakes me up. Anyway in the space of the last hour I've gone in to the work room, got out a ladder, grabbed my tape measure and figured out how to safely position a boatload of books on top of my oak roll top desk. Maybe a couple of dozen or so, half hardback half paperback, they didn't really have a good home. And I do know how to organize my books in a wee bit of wasted space. It's that connection, going so deep. Being 4 or 5, lying horizontal somewhere, making out the titles on a row of books. Not quite able to read them yet, but close. Peck’s Bad Boy.Why do I remember that one?

So getting rid of books clearly is not happening.

Man I love that roll top. It's a monster. I probably got it I don't know 25 years ago? One of our favorites, speaking of antiques—a high end junk shop I would say—had it simply parked there against the wall. And I made him an offer, clearly doing the wrong thing, the thing you're never supposed to do, transmit that you want something and I think he wanted it out of there. I mean I'm serious. I had not even measured anything. Come time to deliver it, which the owner offered to do since we're a couple miles away, found out that it would fit through the front door but couldn't get it down the hallway much less up the stairs. Couple of hours and some severe mental trauma, on my part anyway, and I swear to God those guys took it all the way out into the backyard and up the stairs, lifted out one of the sliding windows up in the back room here on the third floor. So picture them on the deck with a ladder and they, the two of them, manage to hoist it in two parts, up through that open space and smack against the wall, where it sits to this day. I offered them a beer and they said no no, they plocked the window back in place and left with a smile.

The upper section now has all the slots filled with old paperwork- -warranties and wills and the kids' artwork and school stuff, 3 inches of the wrongful death lawsuit from back in 1980, my mother's final directive and my contract for the GM EV1 we leased and every instruction booklet for everything I ever bought, plus receipts for things like the walnut display case I bought back in Milpitas maybe my newfound widow’s freedom couldn't contain itself. Center section: photos and passports and little drawers with every imaginable minor artifact—an adapter for the hotel in South Africa—and in the secret compartment beneath the slanted desk, untold examplars of abandoned projects from my days of fascination with all things miniature.

On the left down below, more space for (skinny picture) books and old headshots. On the right, raggedy copies of most of my theater scripts along with the beat up paper calendars refilled yearly in a little faux leather binder—what was place that called? Oh, I know!

The Stationery.