At one’s desk

Compulsion is rarely a single impulse. It’s an accumulation. We sit confined within these four walls, bound to the desk by an inescapable need to make order out of chaos. The brain can’t tolerate incomplete patterns. It demands a resolution. It’s exhausting, really—this screaming internal dialogue hunting for a release valve. The human brain is complex, busy, constantly seeking to make sense of all, drifting in and out. In and out. So wearying.

We sit working on it. They tell us a story needs transformation, a new identity unburdened... I don’t subscribe to that. Literary craft warrants a complete convergence of psychological, biological, and existential forces. Convergence, certainly. A coming together, the pinnacle, elevation. By design. All those unexpressed thoughts and internal dialogue screaming to get out. That release valve, it’s what you and I are looking for.

For us, it’s an unburdening. All the unspoken tension, those images so real, vivid and recurring, or those unresolved memories that must be worked through, put into language, externalised. Externalised or communicated? No, externalised, I think.

What’s that? No, not again! All that commotion outside. The stomping, the shouting, the yelling. It all reverberates. Why is there no sound dampening here? I just want to sit here at this bolt-down desk, with my thoughts, my images, and the sound of my pen on paper.

We prefer to sit at our desks in solitude. From behind these desks, a deep immersion occurs that alters time itself. That’s what we desire. We long for that moment when from within the room you pluck from the air a strident metaphor that captures it, yes, or you untangle the plot knot. Alliteration, that’s good. I’ll keep the phrase depending on the plot. I say the plot, but I guess I could interweave intrigue rather than just an unfolding. Let me think about that.

Returning to the graveyard of old ideas—the ones we chased and the ones we let die—is what brings us back to the desk. We are all hunting the same thing: that elusive state of flow, a sudden spike of neurochemical excess. It’s the high. And the subsequent retrieval of the highs. The revisiting allowing that inaudible rush of endorphins, that keeps the pen moving. No keyboards here.

Ah, we go back to quiet. That fellow’s been subdued.

It boils down to containing the emotions. Powerful things, emotions. We seek a structured process that otherwise might prove too chaotic, painful, or complex to bottle up inside. While real life is often uncontrollable, this I know too well, we seek agency, narrative or otherwise. Control. We must interrogate fear, test moral dilemmas, or give order to grief, but on our own terms. These issues we must grapple with and embrace. Creative expression defines the human experience.

Here I must pause. It’s that time of day, of the season, when the sunlight cascades through my small window. A waterfall of sunlight, no, no, that won’t do. Mixed metaphors. Water and sun, a mixed metaphor. We need meaning and intellectual mastery; otherwise, how do we navigate reality?

The filtered sun creeps through my window, floating dust transformed golden in the light shafts. No, not really. No, that needs work. I need to do better; otherwise, how can I tell my story? I have a story to tell. They know that. I haven’t told it to anyone yet. They think they know, but they don’t. My telling will ensure people talk about and remember my story. For years to come. Years. People desire to see things as they are; I can give them satisfaction. Put the facts straight. It’s my story. Maybe it will be too much for them, maybe not.

I’ve absorbed this tale for a long while. It’s not my only one, but it is my masterwork. All bottled up and in need of release. Trauma is difficult to manage and can leave a person overwhelmed, where the emotional and physical impressions on oneself need to be synthesised. Synthesised, yes, I like that word. I’ll use that. Where was I? Oh yes, trauma and the potential to unravel? And that won’t do, the unravelling. All heated and heightened passions require regulation, a mechanism to help and provide stability; otherwise, sanity may be at stake.

Anyone glued to their desk understands this.

I don’t enjoy talking about my story because it’s all consuming, isn’t it? Or can be. No, I prefer to keep it to myself despite their constant probing. I’m not wedded to my desk, but I have time and I think daily practice is required. It also helps with stress. They say in that altered creative state; it helps to process all those fragmented, sensory-heavy images that won’t leave you alone. I don’t mind visiting them; the images remain vivid, but I would prefer to do it at my bidding. Not suppressing, more of a control thing. You know, taming them.

The sun continues its path, or we have. Regardless, the sun’s beam has disappeared. And the dust motes, no longer golden, were gone. No, not gone, captured. One splendid climactic moment held.

“Keep a journal,” they tell me. “It’s therapeutic. It creates distance.” They talk as if they knew. They talk about it as if it’s medicine—safe, sanitary, distanced from the mess of things. But distance is a coward’s tool. I don’t want distance. I want dissection. Safety doesn’t uncover truth. If you want to crack open a life, if you want to expose the hidden architecture of a choice, you don’t journal. You choose a point of view. The exact lens. You take internal agony and drag it out into the light.

So, which perspective gives me the cleanest sightline? That’s always the question. To get to the marrow of why people do what they do, observe, shape, and resolve. You must direct the eye. To truly master a story, you must study it rationally, mould it, and then force it to its resolution. Grasp the entire weight of it. I need them to understand; you see. And that requires absolute control. I hold the pen. I construct the scene; I dictate the light; I decide where the story falls. I decide.

Are we not the primary experts of our own lives? We tell our stories, and they shape us. But no single story can encompass the full complexity of a human life. So, I must choose what I reveal and what must stay hidden. There should be some alternative, subordinate stories to add to it, you know, to flesh it out a bit. Give the tale some potency. But then again, perhaps my tale doesn’t need embellishment.

No, come on, stories do not form in a vacuum. Class, culture, especially gender, always gender, shape the stories we hold about ourselves. They feed internal struggles, don’t they? We can’t leave them out, otherwise how will they understand? How will I get across the harms that I have had?

I wish I had a more comfortable chair. One of those sturdy wooden ones you can tip back onto two legs. That’s how I think—balanced on the precipice, head tilted toward the ceiling, looking for some sudden shift in perspective to cut through the drabness of the room. Don’t mistake it for restlessness. Security is not the issue. I’m in full control here; I’m the one with the pen. This story belongs to me.

Besides, how could they know what I really have to divulge? I’ve constructed too many side streets, too many elegant detours that lead them away from the key aspects, you know, the heart of the matter just when they get close. It vexes them, I know, but it’s my right as the author. That’s the beauty of those labyrinths I build—pulling them away from the core truth, sending them off on another tangent just as they think they’ve caught up. Frustrating, sure, but it’s my design. As for the masterpiece, it’s the execution that holds me back. I’m still determining how to make the wreckage inside me visible on the page. Are motifs enough? Can a heavy, suffocating setting carry that kind of weight by itself? Or am I overcomplicating the mechanics of it? Lost in the craft. The drama is already there, raw and waiting.

There can be no sudden epiphany, of that I am sure, though that is what they want. Perhaps introduce some prior groundwork and backstory. Not too much, though. You want them to work at it, investigate it, remember it. Subtle moments where the character resists before giving in to temptation. And in the act, resistance, so much more than one could have imagined, frenzied, but wait, the character arc needs to feel earned. Multiple climaxes are required. Sow the seeds early, but where to start? Synthesize, there’s that word again, examining one’s life for the small moments, the taunting, the temptations, the resisting, and the ultimate moment of capitulation. No, it’s not giving in; it’s more acceptance.

Characters so often bleed for problem-saturated narratives, bound by rules they didn’t write. We are not a sociology thesis. These aren’t absolute truths. I never accepted them, not for a second. Whether a character succumbs to a false premise or breaks free is entirely up to me. It concerns control. You could bring in a foil, sure—someone to challenge the protagonist’s perspective gently. No. Absolutely not. Rules like that are pure entrapment. They don’t need to be debated; they need to be dismantled. Those rules are a cage, constructed with intent. And cages are meant to be called out.

We must reclaim agency and stop the character reacting to flawed external beliefs. Literary texts say we need to demonstrate the transformation, the new identity, unburdened and accepting of the alternative path. Of this I do not subscribe. They may have witnessed, but do they comprehend? That is in the revealing. When I chose the revealing. And I chose what will be revealed.

An alarm sounds and a small light flashes red. The metallic locks release, and a bored, overweight guard in uniform emerges with a sigh.

“Prisoner 687, you will accompany me to the exercise yard.”