Say your papers are piled over everything, as mine are.  You could experience a moment of panic confronting it, as I have from time to time.  It’s like looking at an avalanche about to happen, frozen in time, a jumble of all the moments it might have not become an avalanche.  There are virtues greater than a clear desk or kitchen table, sure, but those things are nice too.

Nicer, anyway, than that wall of papers, suddenly beginning to pulsate, about to overcome you.  I get back to it now, like the Dutch boy about to stick a finger into that little hole in the dike, to mix metaphors like the tossed salad of papers on either side of the screen where these words magically appear.