"Corner of Misery"

It started small, when I was at a different desk across the room.

We are required to bust up cds and disks when we are done with them. Broken bits, flashing in the light, gathered on my desk as I broken each piece and I thought, someone else could make a brilliant piece of modern, abstract art out of those pieces. Then I thought, why can't that someone brilliant be me? It started with bits of cds and disks and quickly incorporated bags of blood and the left over barbed wire from Halloween. After I moved to another desk and got to redo it, I added the purple tissue paper behind it. Over the months, I added the scissors I broke while trying to cut up a cd, a few marshmallows during the phase of throwing those back and forth, and some dried, crusty frog "throw-up" (that's the yellow stuff).

The flowers and figurines came later. I guess because everyone saw the "darkness" of broken bits, I got the persona of a more gothic, destructive type. People started to tease me by decorating my desk with flowers and pink and figurines, thinking it would bother me. Don't they remember that I hiked through England for two months twice? Immersed in nature and beauty and Romantic and Victorian literature? Don't they remember I write Fantasy? Anyone who writes fantasy is a romantic at heart. Haven't they ever found beauty in anything around them that isn't an obvious kind of beauty? Sometimes it's harder to find. It requires looking. The black film, closest to the light, reflects it so well, you can't tell it's black. Further down, the black mixed with the right light reflects the flower above it.

I added the flowers and figurines to my "Corner of Misery." Perhaps it should have a different name. It makes me happy every time I see it. I named the figurines: Tess, Dorothea, and Kathy. Some misery and happiness in their stories.