Some assembly required

It's one of those paradoxes. The virtual world gets more and more tidy and compact--my whole music library would fit on an iPod; everything I've ever written would fit into a corner of a thumb drive; a Kindle can hold every book I've ever read. But my real world becomes more and more a mess. No really--think post-apocalypse Bartertown/Thunderdome mess, think Neanderthal midden heap mess. Think boys' dorm room closet mess. I walk in shame.

My dark wood, plate glass and brushed aluminum desk, which once looked like something trendy out of  CSI Miami, is now completely invisible under undifferentiated drifts of mail, memos, printouts, poetry chapbooks, CDs, litter from munchies, and something unrecognizable, but with a familiar smell. In addition, it holds two monitors, two speakers, one phone, an LP digital turntable, a scanner, a microphone, a headphone set, a digital camera, a semi-functioning mini-disk player, a flash recorder, a stereo remote, at least one cassette tape, one floppy disk, two mini-disks, and a zip disk in a pear tree. Also, a hand-thown lidded jar containing a hand-tooled leather change purse containing three Mercury dimes (for casting the I Ching), a hammered Chinese brass box with Imperial dragons, topped by a small cast image of the Bodhisatva of Compassion, a tube containing an unknown but popular Japanese condiment, a machine-tooled pen and holder in the shape of a '50s sci-fi rocket ship, a set of itty-bitty screwdrivers, a stapler and a Sharpie.

And that's just the desk. Just to hit the high points, seven of the dozen computers in the room work. There is a full shelf of outdated manuals for outdated software, a nice selection of early 20th century illustrated books, a 1929 Atwater Kent radio transmitter, an Edison wax cylinder redording, a horn-style speaker and a condensor mike that weighs 20 pounds. Along with several rat's nests of cables for connecting devices I no longer own to devices that no longer work. I'm hoping to jerry-rig a shambolic automaton out of the spare parts that can write the Listening Post for me, leaving me some spare time to tidy up, but I can't find the assembly manual anywhere.