I see; You see

If you were to walk into my bedroom, the first thing you would see is my bedside table. The Jazzman looks at it and sees clutter. I look at it and see items: this and that.

It doesn't get this way overnight. Every couple of months I remove everything, dust, and start restacking. I take off a few items, throw some things away, find other resting places for some items. And end up with an accumulation that looks too much like what I started with.

When I look at the table, I see:

1. about eight books I intend to read;


2. my journal that I like to write in each night but only get to once a month;


3. catalogs that I want to flip through before I toss them out;


4. my clock-radio (balanced on three more books I intend to read) so it's high enough to be seen across the bed in the middle of the night;


5. hand lotion and massage oil;


6. my watch, gold bracelet, tennis bracelet, everyday gold hoop earrings, my daddy's watch from about 1980, and whatever pair of earrings I wore [today] and haven't put away yet;


7. a raku bowl I made in a pottery class eight years ago and use as a catch-all for whatever little items I need to put someplace and don't know what to do with—buttons that have fallen off pants, a few paper clips, a tube of lip balm;


8. a stack of CDs to play on the clock-radio as I'm falling asleep;


9. a bunch of other stuff; and


10. a Beanie Baby snake that Boston wants me to reproduce, but a little bigger so it can pretend to eat a small stuffed mouse that he also wants me to make.

Oh, I didn't detail the lower shelf, which holds a couple more books, a book of Washington Post crossword puzzles, two Sudoku books, and about a pound of dust.

Confronted with this mess accumulation, what would you see? And given a similar situation in your own bedroom, how would you handle it?

My solution? The books will go on a bookshelf; the puzzles will find another shelf; the bowl will find another shelf, probably in the sewing room. The table will be cleared off, the dust eradicated, and my nightstand will stop looking like my life is out of control.

Or maybe I'll just find a box, throw it all in, shove it in a closet, and start over again.