In high school and throughout my studies {as a student of English Literature} at University of Toronto, I had the good fortune of having under my possession, a magickal writing desk. It was a massive desk, made of ancient bog oak, with 4 drawers, 2 on each side. An impressive piece of wood.
Seated at its helm I was Captain of a fantastic specular flight deck. Specular, because it possessed a powerful, automatic-writing-capacity. A looking glass of sorts, given to the kind of reflection inspired by the vision of sky, reflected in a lough, clouds drifting past mountains upside-down on the other side. And I was its soothsayer, seeking in its flat oak top, my divining pool – My future, skulking beneath the surface of its dark water.
I consulted my dictionary for the Latin meaning of the word “specular” and found “speculum” at its root – a device used for opening cavities. In a way it was not unlike a chrome speculum- that cold, unfriendly tool, familiar to gynaecologists and their willing victims. I was Dr. Spec, Explorer of the Deepest Caverns of my own Subconscious Mind and The Desk, my Starship Enterprise – teleporting me through inter-dimensional space and time, into the unseen portals of my imagination, unveiling parallel universes and penetrating past lives – at warp speed.
At any rate it was a desk built with intention – and for a higher purpose no doubt.
It had at one time reportedly belonged to Leonard Cohen, the famous Canadian recording artist. It came from Montreal, purchased at a garage sale for a few dollars. Given to me one winter’s day as the snow flies by an old band mate of Neil Young’s. I grew up on the same street as Neil Young in North Toronto. A Boulevard actually- Old Orchard, Boulevard of Daydreams.
One Saturday afternoon my father and Comrie Smith, Neil’s old buddy and our next-door neighbour, carried the writing desk out his back-door, across the street, in through our back-door, down our back staircase and into my bedroom, which was in the basement of our old house. And strangely, almost straight away, the silverfish and centipedes disappeared overnight ~ never to bother me ~ ever again.
That was the first indication. This was no ordinary writing desk.
Increasingly my thoughts began to wander down unexplored avenues, never-ending streams, celestial gardens and forest pathways unfolded, dream-like landscapes of the mind exploding, as I stared on the blank page and contemplated the words of Poe, Pound and Plath. My unrelenting muse had visaged and the doors of perception opened wide.
My writing style developed rapidly at the desk. Tempered, I imagine, by the light of its cool refraction.
Sunbeams and wood nymphs skipped across its chestnut stage. A rainbow slide glided over its golden plane. Oh the flights of fancy it entertained !
My best poem, The Fire Escape, was not written by me – but by the desk’s own doing. Seemingly in a matter of moments – and at will. It came out at once, fully formed in front of me, eye glistening like an oyster pearl. It was late in the evening while reading some Irving Layton, some weird ménage à trois spontaneously erupted on the desk before me; As I read Layton’s lines and mocked their misogyny with Cohen as my ally. The desk had given me permission to do, and to write, as I pleased. Everything I thought fit.
It was The Desk, not I, that transcribed Wagner’s Tristan and Iseult from Iseult’s POV and turned the entire opening sequence into a demented country-blues song based on The Tristan Chord, which at the time I didn’t even know existed. The desk held the key to The Secret Chord That David Played– And It Pleased The Lord. The Desk was the holy-fucking-grail !
It was the desk that made short work deciphering all those grant forms and student loan application forms I had to fill out. Practical Magick too – very important.
Miraculously my spelling improved overnight.
Looking back I believe it was The Desk witch wrote all my term papers, all my essays, all my songs, all my poems, all my letters and filled out all my application forms. I was merely its translator, its interpreter. I was channelling The Desk !
I’ll never forget the day my father sold it. I was not present at its removal. I fell ill and was forced to lay in bed for several weeks. And I can not say if I ever fully recovered from its suchness- such a colossal loss of words that befell upon me.
After the letting go of the desk Cohen too developed a rare form of writer’s block. He still spends entire days on one word. He said so himself. It took him 11 years to write Hallelujah. That desk, which made him burst into tears while it wrote Suzanne – gone. Vanished forever like the mythical island of Hether Blether.
Or perhaps, it is sitting silently in someone’s basement corner. Watching. And waiting – to whisper all the lost lines of every writer who ever sat down to write something by it.
I shudder to think, a disused piece of furniture, surrounded by musty couches and boxes of dusty old books, a broken chair, an empty shelf, biding its time for The Repossession. Or worse – in some puritan’s garage, who, fearing its power, could administer the final death sentence by cold fire ?
The truth is I no longer know anything about it.
Only that sometimes it calls me by name.
And even now as I am fevered with the invocation to write, I hear its crackled voice, feel its quiet yearning.
By Catherine F. Simpson
