View from the chair

This morning I decided to focus on life from where I sit at the computer.

I talk a lot, or at least it seems to me I do, about the view from the two windows on either side of me. The one to my left isn't exactly to the side of me. Directly to my left, about six feet away, is the woodstove. It not very picturesque, but it keeps me warm in the winter. The window is actually across the room behind the wood stove, thirty feet away maybe, and I have to swivel and look back over my left shoulder to see it. The other window is directly to my right, about four feet away, so I can glance out without too much turning. It's not very picturesque either, as there's a lamp, a CD player, and usually a stack of CD's and a cat in the windowsill in front of it, and the view is of the dog kennel and the side fence with the top of my neighbor's house peeking over it. There are trees above that, and often they do something picturesque, like wave green leaves at the white clouds scudding by or look intricate and stark against storm gray skies. Today there are snowflakes out there.

To finish the 360 degrees, behind me is the diningroom table, usually piled high with things that don't belong on it, including a cat even though they all know they're not allowed on any table or counter (and when has a silly rule like that ever stopped a cat?). Behind the table is the kitchen, no wall between them. Since I don't have eyes in the back of my head, although my kids often swear I do, I experience that view by sound more then sight. The tea kettle whistling, the clattering of dishes and the squeaking of cabinet doors, punctuated by sliding and crashing sounds as a cat displaces whatever slid and crashed.

But none of those views are the view I want to focus on today. Instead I want to show you what I see when I lean back and look up, usually lost in thought. I'm leaving out the messy cabinets on either side. And although this view is also messy, it's FUN mess and I like it. Go ahead, click on the pic and get close up.



Jeff walked by and looked at the picture when I was uploading it and said "It looks like a shrine." I thought so too. Probably because of the Virgin de Guadalupe. But it is, in a way. The Desk Shrine. The Computer Shrine. The Shrine of Creative Thought.