Moss growing in the words carved on a grave flagstone, Dunbar. Contrast turned way up to help with reading

I have been trying to read what the stone above says on it – Here lyes haste Patrick…who…this life…take(?)… – if anyone is good at decoding the worn and the moss grown, please chime in (like the bells of a cathedral). I am interested in those spaces mutated by time and nature, the worn, the seeded, the words interrupted by lichens and the washing away of stone by the weather.

This in contrast to the living spaces some of you have so kindly shared. It makes for an interesting and incomplete dichotomy, between the living line (word brush pencil) and the dead.  In both, the continuity is change: Lyra’s train seat which she leaves and returns to, a seat which is hers and different each time.  Anna Fonte’s chair, which is still in the picture as it once was, now moved (that makes it sound terribly serious). Think of your papers, ephemera,  work in motion, creativity manifest. The changeability and constant of human needs and wants: for a light-soaked view; for home comforts; for the sweet consolations of pets at our feet; for a good drink of water; for our words and images to mean, endure, be transferred on.

I think of how I am constructing characters who must always place and replace themselves within this frame, of the living and the remaining and the sometimes terrible inevitable pace of change. I think of how they must make their peace, and how hard that is sometimes.

For myself, I think of how much information I am taking in on a daily basis – how many words, how many sights that fire, overfire my brain.  Which is my way of coming to – how I need a short break, after all these encounters. Insightful as they have been, I need now to sit and think, instead of search and see. Not for long, just to give myself time to read the words and the images with due diligence, instead of at break-neck. I’ll be light as a ghost till then, back to full solidity at some point next week.

This space belongs to: Averil Dean -

I used to think I wrote best in silence, behind closed doors, preferably with a Do Not Disturb sign hanging from the doorknob. But over the past several months I’ve begun to see that a change of place is a huge help to me. So my writing space is my notebook, wherever it lands. On the weekends I’ve been known to move from coffee shop to library to park bench to diner, all in a day. When I’ve been in one place for a while and start to get restless, I fold up my pages and take my show on the road. Have notebook, will travel. That’s me.

This space belongs to: Jordan Cox  -

I’m a full-time college student in my last semester of my senior year. Not only do I commute to my university every day where I’m taking 20 credit hours, but I’m heavily involved on campus. But the end of every day (which usually ends in the wee hours of the morning for me), I just want to collapse in my bed. I spend the little alone time I have snuggling with my cat Max (not pictured) and with my PillowPet Harold (pictured) that my friends got me as a sort of gag gift for my last birthday. I also catch up on my favorite blogs via bloglovin’, check my tumblr & do a bit of reading. I’m currently reading Ring by Koji Suzuki.

This space belongs to: Teri Carter -

This space belongs to: Lyra -

Here’s my workspace…always the same seat, second from the end facing out, top tier of the train right next to my clutter you see there; bag of books, lunchbag, and my fuzzy gloves.

This space belongs to: Sydney Smith (AKA SydneyDraws) -

these are of my fifth floor studio in Halifax, Nova Scotia. it over looks a suffering street that would be good only for buses if there werent a bus strike in effect. at night the students of the many colleges take over and provide interesting distractions. the place is a mess im sorry but its never going to be fully clean. chairs are missing wheels and the desk is wobbly.  i love it. its forgiving. 

This space belongs to: Macdougalstreetbaby -

I sit at the dining room table, with 180 degrees of light pouring in. The only direction I don’t face is south, probably because there are no windows there. I like windows. They help me breathe.

This space belongs to: INTERN -

This space belongs to: Paul Lamb (of Lucky Rabbit’s Foot)-

This space belongs to: Scott (AKA photographer/blogger Seekraz) -

The attached photo is “my” desk at home.  It is where I assemble most of my posts and have the photos on my computer.  If I’m feeling the need to write with pen on paper, I might sit on the couch that can be seen in the photo, or its mate that is directly across from the fireplace.  I also write at my desk in my work place, occasionally, when the writing-spirit is moving me and I fear that I cannot ignore it…and sometimes, too, in my truck, while parked under the rain-dripping trees at my favorite park, or beneath the shady trees on a bench in the same park.

This space belongs to: Linda, author of Animals Behaving Badly -

I came to your post via my internet-friend the Rejectionist’s tweet
and when saw your hedgehog I was inspired to chime in.
This is my workspace, which is not complete without two sleeping pugs.
There’s also a bit of stuffed Panamanian golden frog hanky-panky in
the background there, which all makes sense given what I write about.

Here are the first two submissions – by chance, two writers.

This space belongs to: Anna Fonte, The Girl in the Hat -

My writing chair is tucked in the corner of our family room. In a small urban home, space is a premium. Can you see how my rear has flattened the cushion and my feet have worn a patch in the carpet? That’s my little spot, but it’s only mine when the girls are in school.

But it’s time for my older daughter to have her own room. Very soon, probably within the next couple months, I will put it all into storage–the chair, my books and papers, the tchotchkes–to make room for her.

It will be fine. It’s only until she goes to college. I will write on the sofa in the living room, without my books. But a real writer can write anywhere, right? The where doesn’t matter, does it?

This space belongs to: Chris J Rice -

After numerous shots of my computer screen, keyboard, the floor beside my chair filled with discarded manuscript pages, an empty bulletin board, the stack of books I’m not reading, my beloved dog who waits by the door for me, the kitchen window I stare through, the overstuffed chair I mope in, I decided this image taken with a Shakeitphoto app on my iphone last summer while in the midst of revision to my novel RAMBLER best conveys my work space. The girl on the postcard is my emo avatar, Yoshitomo Nara’s bratty art girl, like me full of petulant longing. 

Red Cardinal, Central Park

“A washed corpse, the body of rain-drenched trees

That below my window darkens further. In

Rememberance. Grave blankets of dusk over it.

Cold sheet of mist over it. Death a bird shadow

On the sill. This is the plot of my consideration.

The copse below my window, the small wood

Without an oracle, with no significant episode.

It is a hand’s breadth. It is a small ache.

The hand knocks at the window. The window opens.

The smell of wetted dirt and wild fruit steps

Up.

[...]

If you stand above woods the tree

Is one. It is many, if you walk below. Many,

If you step past the stations of your thought

And number your steps. Smaller and smaller.

The faculty of expansion decreasing. The faculty

Of breath decreasing. The rain withdrawing

With a whistling hush.”

Two extracts from ‘Past the Stations’ by Brigit Pegeen Kelly – from her book, Song.

Further – this, and this (the book of which I will be receiving as a bonus for subscribing to Hobart late at night, and having a fine talk about whisky and bourbon with Hobart on Tumblr.

And, if you’d like more, there is also this. Where I would one day like to go and stay in the house of the future, listening to the waves rasp the black rocks while I type. Or while on the shore I try thinking of poems that are worthy of the rocks.

First, a short warning. Spoilers. All the spoilers. I don’t even care. Note the lurid photo above, trying to emulate this book and all its fault lines, saying, Danger, poorly constructed text ahead. Leave now!

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It is sometime in the 22nd century. America has been abandoned, due to an oil crisis rendering it non-fuctional (South and Central America are okay though, as is the rest of the world – no word on Canada). A group of explorers set out from Plymouth by ship, tasked with investigating the uptick in radioactivity coming from the supposedly-empty continent. Among them is a stowaway, named Wayne, after John Wayne, the enigmatic Captain Steiner, an Ukrainian bureaucratic (don’t worry about him, he dies), and a foxy (but fragile) blond scientist called Anne Summers.

Little do they know that they will encounter:

1. The remnants of the native population. That is, the Americans. Called ‘Indians’ despite the fact that, according to the writer, the ‘Redskins’ had vanished long ago. Highly primitive social groupings. Afraid of lights in the sky. One tribe, the Executives, name their children after brands (the only words that survive are those on billboards). Name all their women ‘Xerox’ because ‘they make good copies.’

2. Vast desert interior, from the East Coast to the Rockies, apparently because the gulf stream was deliberately reversed by the Russians, in order to make Siberia a grainbowl for the surging American diaspora, and this disrupted American rainfall patterns. Cacti and creosote bushes in dunes in Times Square.

3. Giant holographic projections of Marilyn Monroe, that cowboy from Shane, and many others!

3. President Charles Manson of Las Vegas!

4. Forty-four man strong Army of robot presidents!

Further spoilers: President Charles Manson wants to nuke the remaining US cities (all empty) in order to keep back the ‘disease’ of returning immigrants. President Charles Manson lives in the Howard Hughes suite in Vegas, and is suitably afraid of germs.

How does Manson (not the original, but an equally insane copy) die (of course he dies!):

Manson knelt by his chair, stared in unfeigned horror at the semi-circle of Presidents shuffling into position around him, a reproving board of elders. There was an aloof Jefferson, a smiling but wan Dwight Eisenhower, a matter-of-fact Truman in a hurry to get everything over, a prim Wilson and even a sweating Nixon embarressed by their physical resemblance.

     Raising the pistol, Manson backed away among the television screens, trying to draw their light on to himself.  He looked down at his pallid, blood-flecked body, an adolescent puzzled to find himself in this senile flesh, caught after hours in the therapy room with his broken toys, yet still  cunning enough to put on an ingratiating smile [...] He turned hopefully to the Presidents, and then let out and angry cry and fired his pistol straight at the solemn figure of Washington. 

       As the two bullets carried away half his face, Washington flinched and staggered back. A third bullet caught his chest, but he shook himself in a dignified way and raised his antique pistol, calmly signalling to his fellow-Presidents.  Together, they raised their rifles.

So, I don’t think I will bother analysing Hello America deeply. I had thought Ballard would be a more nuanced, engaging (and less sexist, less racist, less… execrable) writer than is evident here. And he probably is, but I’ll be shy of him for a while.

I’ll just leave you with this to sum up my feelings.

Cherry Blossoms, Washington D.C.

A hillside shack, Catalonia

Dusk, from Arthur's Seat

Ideal Hosiery, Lower East Side, NYC

Lastly, one of both - Summer in the ruin, Poblet, Catalonia