Stuck inside, I started to wander and wonder.
I stare at the shiny orange-brown surface and wonder: is it beech? And then I question, given the retailer, if it would be beech or is it likely some kind of plastic, imitation, faux effect of beech? I don’t think they use real wood in desks. I don’t think they use real wood in much nowadays.
I stop myself from googling the type of wood.
It’s so easy to look online. To search for the answer. To search for anything.
Search is second-nature. Just ask Alexa. Or Siri.
I think search destroyed so much imagination.
And so I sit here pondering some more on the grains, on the stripes of tree bark which I’ve never noticed until now. The streaks of age before the trunk was cut and life was stopped.
And then I wonder if the grain is even real? Maybe it’s just injected dye stained across this laminated surface to make it look like wood.
The thought crosses my mind that maybe the desk is metal? That it’s all a ruse and the desk made to look like wood, isn’t in fact wood, and it’s made from the remains of a car. If cars are made from metal?
I hold the surface. It’s too warm for metal. And then I wonder why I even thought that.
And I realise it’s because I wanted to entertain something stupid.
And then I say, if you wanted to think something stupid, you would ask: is my desk made of blancmange?
Now that would be really insane to think my desk was made of blancmange. But then without wanting to stop this train of thought, because it is rather entertaining, I then contemplate what flavour it may be.
I look at the patina and see the reflection of the light on the shiny surface. The answer should be butterscotch, if I was going by the colour alone. But I’m not sure I’d like a desk made of butterscotch blancmange, when I think of butterscotch flavouring, I think of Angel Delight.
I eyeball the smooth texture again and decide it should be strawberry flavoured. A strawberry flavoured desk made of blancmange would be ideal.
And how does it stay up? I ask myself.
I look at the grey legs and decide they are chocolate flakes. The sheer physics of how I sit at a desk made of strawberry blancmange and chocolate flakes is neither here nor there.
It doesn’t matter to me how my laptop stays on top of my imagined desk, in fact, I think I’d rather see my laptop as a chocolate button. Like the giant ones Cadbury’s brought in a few years ago. And I look at my table light as it swathes me and my giant button in its glow and I decide it can be an orange smartie.
Again, it matters not that an orange smartie does not emit a glow. If you shone a torch on it, it probably would emit something.
But it need not matter.
The truth of any of it, need not matter.
What matters most, is to use my imagination. There is no sense to be made. Making sense is a very boring occupation.
I thought that when I watched the news today. When I tried to look ahead and think of what the future holds.
It made me feel bleak. It made me feel down. It made me feel upset about too many things.
And so I came to my desk, where I spend too much time, and I made it a fantasy of blancmange and chocolate.
And I like this fantasy, my little dream world, so I will allow it to continue.
I sit here now, writing on a giant chocolate button atop a strawberry blancmange stilted by Cadbury’s flakes and life is a joy.
I will remember, however, not to lick anything!