Over the past few days I’ve been doing an epic intervention in my study. Not “cleaning my office” but “rediscovering my study” (office doesn’t sound nearly so civilized or literary as study). I had considered calling it the library but I’m in the process of reducing the number of books so library would be pushing it.
Well, that’s the plan.
Anyway, I essentially took absolutely everything out of the room, dusted and polished, reduced the book population by twenty-five percent, emptied and reorganized the drawers, evicted some furniture, hung some art, and reclaimed the space as a creative sanctuary where my work will find a new lease on life.
What I need when I’m writing is an environment that is heavy, or suggestive – redolent may be the word – with layers of inspiration. Windows with a beautiful view, books by authors I admire, reference materials, photographs, works of art, music, an easy chair where I can read…
I can sense the stories hidden just below the surface, bubbling up from the photographs, the novels, rocks from our travels, my guitars, my cricket bat, carved figures from Africa, the teacher-of-the-year golden apple, the yamaka I “borrowed” from the WesternWall in Jerusalem, the box that holds paraphernalia from my schoolboy days in England, my dad’s old steamer trunk that was in turn his father’s steamer trunk…
My study is loaded, redolent with story. My life is rich with story too. I feel this urgency to live it well, to let it soak in, and then to share it in a way that will inspire the world to engage this Great Adventure with passion, faith, light, and love.
My study is loaded, redolent with story. My life is rich with story too. I feel this urgency to live it well, to let it soak in, and then to share it in a way that will inspire the world to engage this Great Adventure with passion, faith, light, and love.
Above all, love – without it there is no story to tell.
– DEREK
One hundred years ago the world tried to make a decision for peace. It was Armistice Day, November 11, 1918.
What better image for a Sunday morning than our first Eastern Bluebird of the winter. The Bluebirds tend to stay away from our garden until the first serious cool down and this weekend the temperatures are dropping off considerably.
For those who appreciate the power and the beauty of great art, this post is for you. The images here are photographs that I took (with permission, by the way, and without using flash)… featuring amazing paintings crafted by one of America’s pre-eminent Twentieth-Century artists, Georgia O’Keeffe.
The North Carolina Museum of Art is an amazing location that I am sure we will return to again and again. Art is good for the soul. Enjoy these images.
Once in a while I will write in response to a question from one of my readers. Sometimes I will build on ideas that have come out in conversations. Today I’m posting in response to an assignment.
In a serendipity earlier today, cleaning out my study, I unearthed this photo of my old dog, Mozart, snuggled by my feet under my writing desk. Moe has been gone probably fourteen years now. I was still a writer for the Tampa Tribune at the time and I swear I have never received such a deluge of mail as I did the week I published a column about his death.
You can read 
I’m glad that we live in the woods, and I have become content to let the garden find its own way via my commitment to a program of limited maintenance and support of the term “Natural Area”. This may sound like a rationalization to avoid excessive gardening, but I like to call it “working with nature rather than against it.”
People often ask me about sources of inspiration I tap into as a writer. I do read quite a bit, but mostly – for me – it’s about paying attention. Or, as Rebekah put it when asked how she prepares for her Sunday message, “I try to stay awake.”
