Desk

In half-opened boxes next to your desk sits old magazines, a small cutting mat, tape, glue, and a tin box with an Exacto knife and replacement blades. An accordian folder houses cut out images and finished collages. When you thumb through magazines from previous decades at Value Village before purchasing them, you can sometimes spot signs of the hands that held them before you. A small water ring on a Southern Living from 1998 shows which timeshare the previous owner thought of renting in the classifieds section. A dog-eared corner of a National Geographic shows a particular article of interest, like an underlined phrase in a book. Sometimes cutting out images and remixing them into new ones is all you have the mental capacity to execute. If you were braver about ladders or spiders then you might venture to the uninsulated attic that will raise your electric bill in the summer and find a box of long-forgotten magazines previous tenants left here. But you are not so brave, and you have to switch out the laundry before you finish unpacking and organizing your workspace.