Man at Desk

He sits in the dark early hours of his day, occasionally raising his eyes to the cork bulletin board on the wall before him. The number of notes and papers pertaining to his day-job have dwindled there over the months to just a few essential items hanging from their wooden pushpins.
Tucked into the maple frame in the upper left-hand corner are two old photos. A black-and-white glossy of his oldest brother with an arm around their mother. They are outside in the winter. A tall, leafless tree stands in the distance behind them. The photo, circa 1972, likely shot by the child who is now the man at his desk. In four years the brother would be gone.
To the right of this photo is another: this one in color, matte finish. Two women sitting, hands in their laps, in the breakfast nook of the man's childhood home. The woman on the left is the daughter of the woman on the right. Both are peering, smiling, up at a point on the ceiling, beyond the frame of the picture. The daughter in the photo would also be gone in four years. Upon the wall between the women there is a round plaster cast, painted gold, of a child's hand. The man at his desk wonders, continues to wonder if it were his own second-grade project. It's a very curious photo and that is why it lives there, on the man's bulletin board above his desk.
Another item, approximately five inches over from the photos on the top of the board is a three-by-six inch piece of blue paper upon which a poem has been typed on an old typewriter. The poem, XXIX, by Antonio Machato, is from "Proverbios y Canteres," recited often by the man since learning it as a student of Spanish 20 years ago.

Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino, y nada mas;
Caminante, no hay camino.
Se hace camino al andar.

The blue paper is tattered and creased from traveling in the man's wallet and in the back flaps of his journals.
Below the poem hangs a picture the man's son drew in heavy black ink. It was his son's balloon-head stage, in which all of his creature subjects were depicted with large oval shapes at the end of long, stringy necks. This one has small dots for eyes and, presumably, nostrils. There are two mouths, one upon it's side, or is it the curve a cheek? Several lines radiate outward from the bulbous skull depicting perhaps hair or even limbs. The character's name, Winzel, has been scrawled on the bottom of the piece by his preschool teacher. It is labeled "Gavin, 3 (2001)." Winzel graces the outside of a large folded paper, a neatly fashioned envelope, taped closed. The man wonders, continues to wonder, what the envelope contains.

Al andar se hace camino,
y al volver la vista atras
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.

In the center of the bulletin board is a standard eight-and-a- half by eleven inch sheet of white paper, secured at the top with a single pin. On the sheet is printed a list entitled "Nine Effective Steps to Writing Better Stories." The man sometimes allows his gaze to rest on one of the steps in the list as he sits at the desk in his dark early mornings. The step he rests on this morning is #7: "Show, Don't tell." He continues to wonder at this simple, endlessly confounding advice.
Several inches below the nine steps to writing better stories is a scribbled note on a three-by-five card, tacked lengthwise. It's a note on some music he heard at the desk nearly a year ago. "Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders, June 25th 1973, 'Boarding House.' It was music that inspired him. Inspiration that lifted him one moment, a year ago at the desk.
To the right of the note on music is a business card of an old high school buddy, now a counselor. A friend who had been able to extract a promise from the man, a promise to finish what he had started. "Write it," he said in the coffee shop where they'd met. It was more than permission. But would he finish the novel? The man wonders, continues to wonder if it all isn't what he has long suspected. Is it too big to capture? Too much for this little desk?
To the right of the business card, in the lower right corner of the board, a small lapel pin is stuck into the cork. An old sepia portrait of Jane Austen peers from the round face of the pin, a coin-sized ghost head waiting, waiting.

Caminante, no hay camino.
Sino estelas en la mar.