Day 222

Ahhhh … Sunday truly is my favorite day of the week. Maybe it’s because it’s the one day of the week when I don’t set an alarm. Maybe it’s because after rolling from bed when my body naturally awakens (which is still pretty early) I roll into my favorite chair and surround myself with The New York Times (perfectly deconstructed and arrayed with sections in the correct order). Maybe it’s because I get a chance for a nice workout, time with some people I love and relax at home. Mostly these days it’s because it’s the day I commit fully and entirely to refueling my creative engines.

I’d intended to crack into a special treat that I bought myself a few weeks ago, but a creative spark resulted in my hunkering down in my newly minted creative area (aka home office) for hours instead.

I’m loving sitting at this desk. It was a gift many years ago from a friend in San Francisco. He had a company that managed estate liquidations and one day he gave me a call.

“Hey Cathy, so I have this desk from an estate and I had this thought that it needs to go to you.” We met up later and he showed me some pictures (this transpired long before the era of the smartphone … in fact cell phone cameras weren’t even really a thing yet). It glowered from the shadows, this beast of a desk. The room in which it sat was dark, shadowed, pools of light from a lamp in the corner, another perched on the corner of the desk. It looked like one of those old wooden desks I remembered from the principal’s office when I was a kid. It was massive. He showed pictures of the detail — dovetail joints, solid brass fittings on the base of each leg, its golden walnut sheen glowing from the darkness.

The room was dark because it was a basement office, a place where its owner could hunker down in the quiet, away from the bustle of the intense life he led. My friend told me the desk had belonged to music impresario Bill Graham, who’d died the previous year in a tragic helicopter crash. For a lot of reasons I didn’t exactly believe him — not the least of which was that if this really did belong to Graham, the likelihood that he could just give it away was pretty slim. There was no receipt, no certificate no indicator on the desk itself of its previous owner.

The gift alone, regardless of its provenance, was so incredibly generous that I didn’t really care to whom it had belonged anyway. I told my friend that I’d love to have the desk and we made arrangements for him to bring it over.

Several days later he pulled up to my apartment with his truck. The desk came out slowly. First the drawers, then the writing table inserts and finally the desk itself. Caught in the afternoon sunlight, the color showed itself to be almost caramel, a golden hue that warmed in the late day sun.

Love at first sight.

Later that day as I sat in my desk chair, poised at the front of this mountain of a desk, I laid my hands on the smooth surface. It felt like home. In the years since I’ve spent quite a bit of time perched alongside this mountain of a desk, even fallen asleep on it on occasion. Over the last several years, however, it became more of a … well, you know how people get stationary bikes or elliptical machines for home and they end up being more like a coat rack/shelving for cast off clothing? Well, my desk turned into something of a way station for unfinished projects, to-do items pending and the like.

My recent office clearing has returned my creative space to me … and it feels swell.

Truly #SundayBliss today.

Today’s Gracious Gratitude. I am grateful for:

• #SundayBliss
• The New York Times
• Having a wonderful and inspiring space in which to be creative
• Knocking off some persnickety to-do items from the list
• Dark chocolate covered pretzels rolled in crushed almonds
• Coconut infused chai tea
• Fascinating night’s sleep with the kind of dreams that leave a smile on your face in the morning
• The promise of an exciting week