Restructuring. I
moved a bookshelf. Turned it sideways. That’s it.
*
The chair died. I
leaned back in it. Too far. Must have had a screw loose. And the chair, too. I
typed that so you wouldn’t have to say it. Time to adjust…what the hell?! The base plate was cracked, creating all that
leeway. Time for a new chair. The same model of chair? No. A different chair.
Swivel? Of course. It’s the only way to fly.
*
An office chair must
meet essential legal requirements. Vitally, it has to be easy to build. (It never
fucking is. I almost ripped off a knuckle building the new chair up into a
usable state.) Even more vitally, it must fit in. This is the tricky part.
Office physics.
The first thing I did, on seeing the crack
in the chair, was reach for the tape. I measured available floorspace. This is
important when your chair sits in a neuk. Then it was off to chairlandsville, a
place on the interwebs, to hunt down a wild seat with the proper requirements.
Revolving. Of course. With space not
terribly spacey, I automatically ignored chairs with arms on them. Until I saw
a chair with arms that folded up. Sit in the chair. Slide forward on those
castors. Engage desk engines. Away we go. And then…
Finished with desk. Push back in chair. Lift
folding arm, swivel chair, eject from office…okay, sounds like a plan. Now
measure the shit out of that fucking seat. Measure, measure, measure…
*
Yes, on paper it
almost worked. Never good enough, is it?
The neuk I created for this computer and
that desk…was too neukish for my chosen chair. There are corner brackets at the
floor, and on top of the cases, keeping my bookcases together in very tight
formation as they curve around this space.
It’s all rather neat. And awkward to change.
The last case in the line was a bookcase too
far. New chair didn’t want to know, on paper. I undid the screws and shoogled
the final bookcase out of its floor fixing without unloading a single book.
This is a skill acquired through millions of
years of bookfolly, endless piling of pagement, and untold toil related to
wordation.
Moving loaded bookcases is not for
professionals. It’s only for amateurs. There’s a risk of being killed, on a
level with being hit by lightning…possible, though unlikely, but…if it happens,
you’ve been blasted. I didn’t move the case far. This was more of a swivel on
the spot to turn the case flat against its neighbour.
Professional types will unload bookcases
first, the fools.
With that wobbly move out of the way, there
was now just enough room for the new chair…which I then ordered in. The end
bookcase is solid in place. There’s space to slide and swivel and turn and sit
and stand and all those regular office things that go with chairs.
The room is still divided into office neuk
and studio space. Usually I must plan for days before moving bookcases around,
and I make use of at least three rooms as stages on which to drop off and from
which to pick up. It’s all about securing far-off space for books to congregate
in, followed by securing nearby space to flit the bookcases through.
This latest change to the office was a major
one that called for minor adjustment. As long as there’s room for a chair, and
I can drink coffee without resorting to gymnastics, I’ll do okay.
*
Wait. Were there no
knock-on effects? Normally, we have to run office changes by Newton
No. There weren’t any knock-on effects. This
time, all I did was move one bookcase around a bit and then I had room for the
new chair. The avalanche from a snowball never happened this time. Why not? I
believe it’s thanks to all the other avalanches I went through.
It’s staggering to think that I have moved
the absolute eternal fuck out of the furniture. There’s very little left to
change, now. Once you cut a hole in the back of a bookcase to accommodate
cables, you know you’ve done just about everything.
In moments of madness, I consider
wall-mounting or ceiling solutions for the studio lights in here. Setting the
studio lights up on walls or on the ceiling gives me more floorspace. However,
instinct tells me to stick to the tripods and stumble through the studio doing
my contortionist act just to switch the lights on.
All the electrical devices conveniently merged
with extensions, oh, long ago. I even took the time to uncover a buried
electrical socket to assist in my mad quest to fix space problems. These
maintenance matters are of the past,
and needn’t concern me.
I’ve played the bookcase game to the point
of saturation so many times, and it’s a losing game…how could it not be? There
are only temporary victories in the war against fleets of incoming books. I
think hard about this, and remember a massive reorganisation from a bajillion books ago.
Sometimes, all you can do is take the
Skyscraper Option. Build up the way. The shorter metal cases came down and the
taller wooden cases climbed up. I thought I wouldn’t have to shuffle things
around again for a long time. A lie was told there, surely.
Yes, I had more space on more shelves. But
the illusion of space is a trap. It’s an ambush you’ve set yourself. I simply
ended up moving taller bookcases around, despite all that extra space I’d
allegedly gained. How am I doing, in terms of space? Have I reached saturation yet
again? No.
Will it take me long to reach saturation yet
again? Hard to say. Incoming boardgames, for use on the YouTube channel, now
threaten saturation in ways that I never considered when dealing with mere
hardback books. But I planned ahead for the influx of low-flying boardgames. When
I handled books, I endured and endured and endured some more before relenting
and reorganising. Madness, I know.
So things are definitely different, now.
Book-buying is down. I’m finally seeing a slight upswing in digital book
purchases. There are always things that can go bye-bye. First to fall are
paintings or posters on the walls, as I reclaim the space and build up to the
ceiling.
I won’t claim all the major moves are done.
But I recognise that I’ve made minor bookcase moves, technical adjustments, and
electrical alterations that helped avoid having to spend a week of my life
shuffling books around one last time, one more time, all over again.
It’s the space against a wall that goes,
long before I contemplate sending books out of the house. There’s a balance,
and it goes like this…
Considers giving books away.
(Bahahahahahahahaha!)
Measures room for new bookcase.
(Bahahahahahahahaha!)
I find it easier to reach for the tape than
for a box to drop books into. That’s as it should be. Oh, I am no hoarder. It
is easy enough to escape from the house in the event of a disaster. That view
contributes to my definition of hoarder.
You will always have unread books on your
shelves. Book hoarders are not compulsive buyers of tomes, but, rather,
compulsive storers of books, with a
vast volume of volumes at their non-disposal. If you buy a load of books and
place them on bookshelves, you are not a hoarder. No.
If you buy a load of books and stack them in
rooms, to the extent that you can’t leave any of those rooms in under a minute,
then you are hoarding. Let us suppose, for a moment, that you march your books
up the stairs, around the corner, and into the rooms up there, narrowing an
already-slim hallway as though the hall is an artery clogged by booklesterol.
No, that is not a word.
Death, by a thousand books. I must stress that the
scene pictured does not depict my book collection.
There is no saving you from the dreaded
bookalanche. Accept your fate with as much dignity as you can muster, as the
massed ranks doom you to a dusty demise.
I have dozens of books nestling in each
bookcase. To hoard books, I’d rip a bookcase out and store hundreds of volumes
in the same space – unable to gain easy access to most of the hoarded stories.
Casually, I wonder at the storage capacity of floorboards, the breaking-point,
and believe I am nowhere near the limit.
If there’s a crash and you never hear from
me again, I’ll have crossed a line imposed by physics. The only thing left to
ponder is the nature of the book that breaks the floor’s spine. Knowing my
literary choices, the book that brings collapse will be witty, and, in a sense
of irony, must fall into the category of rather light reading.
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