I read somewhere that if you ever find yourself buried beneath an avalanche––a fate I wouldn’t wish on even the most egregious of human-beings––your likelihood of survival goes up considerably if you “spit”.

Yes, as in project a wad of saliva from your mouth.

The idea is that despite the enormous God-like power of an avalanche, it can’t disobey the laws of gravity.

Once the crashing snow has settled upon you, you wriggle your head around like a spritely little larva wintering in a cocoon and then spit and watch the direction that the spit falls.

Up?

Down?

Left?

Right?

Then, you start digging like hell in the opposite direction.

In my creative writing course, Meet Cute, I ask my students to “spit” when they feel that they are creatively blocked.

Not so much in the physical sense but in the metaphorical. I ask them to get their bearings and figure out where they’re stuck by describing their current environment in as much gorgeous detail as possible.

This afternoon, as I find myself not so much blocked but uninspired, I’m taking my own advice and describing my writing room depicted in the grainy photograph above.

First there is my desk, made from a wooden rafter my father yanked out of an old tobacco factory. I can see evidence of a fire that broke out there long ago in charred patches that rub against my elbows.

Behind my writing desk is a black and white photograph of alpacas. I hung them there to serve as a constant reminder to not take myself so goddamn seriously. You can only be so serious with 16 alpacas staring daggers into the back of your head.

To the right of my writing desk is a photograph of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s and to the left is the wheel of an old, faded yellow bicycle my father found abandoned somewhere.

In the very back lefthand corner of my writing room sits dozens of squatty Stumptown coffee bottles. I cut the tentacles of the Pothos you see on my desk and propagate them in those Stumptown coffee bottles with a generous amount of water, sunlight and love.

When I find someone I’m fond of, I give them one.

You can’t see it in this particularly photograph but on my desk are dozens of Stumptown bottle caps whose underbellies read “Good Luck”.

I collect these too––until I am forced to throw them out due to their obscene quantity––and stack them on top of each other while I wrestle over sentences.

The typewriter on my writing desk is a Remington Quiet Writer whose name is nothing more than marketing hogwash. It’s as loud as a howitzer and as heavy as a saddle. When I write poetry, I have to hoist the sonofabitch up from the floor like I’m unearthing a basketball-sized turnip.

I love that machine.

On the floor is a cow skin rug. Truth be told, I have mixed emotions about owning an animal skin. In part, because I love animals. In part. because I feel shameful in admitting that I do like the way their skins look atop my hardwood floor. I own just one and got it secondhand if that changes anything.

Out of view is my Pit Bull, June. She’s black and white from snout to tail and as thick as an adolescent warthog. She’s a noisy little beast that snorts and chortles and smacks her lips as she readjusts her snout in much the same way a worry wart readjusts the fingers on their hands.

On the ground to the right of my desk is a cardboard box that houses the Stetson cowboy hat Kace’s grandfather gifted me. And, behind that box and to the right of it is an unfathomable amount of paper that I feed late at night through the tight lips of my Remington.

On the ground to the left of my desk sits a row of books falling over themselves like drunk friends. I have too many books. This is but the tip of the iceberg. It pains me to think I will never be able to read them all. Let’s not consider it.

The chair in my writing room is a special chair. It belonged to some wealthy entrepreneur who ran an office supplies company once upon a time. I like to tell myself it was Bukowski’s old agent, John Martin. But, I know better. Apparently, the guy was worth a small fortune and my father––yes, I have a damn good father––picked it up for me at an estate sale.

(Perhaps he thought that if his son writes in a rich man’s chair then he won’t end up entirely broke…)

My most prized possession, though, is a stone that sits atop my desk.

When I was getting my writing career off the ground, I’d work these odd and terrible jobs to pay the bills. One morning, I was doing some landscaping on a particularly chilly fall day in Indiana when my spade rang like it had hit the hull of a buried Tiger Tank.

Curious, I abandoned my shovel and stuck my bare hands into the earth and felt around in the cold soil for the thing brave enough to do battle with my shovel. After a good bit of feeling around, I unearthed a muddy clod which I ran under a garden hose for some time.

Beneath all the mud and the muck was a stunning rock with three different colored crystals: white, black and auburn.

I can’t tell you how long I stood in the cold, turning that thing over in my hands, before finally sticking it in the passenger seat of my truck and getting back to the day’s work.

It felt like a sign from God that I was digging in the right direction.

By Cole Schafer.

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