Why IS a raven like a writing desk?
Mythologically, the raven represents a messenger, not a gatekeeper like the blackbird. He is a courier, carrying secret letters of transit enabling passage beyond the borders of this brightly lit world into the misty mountainous regions of the Otherworld. The writing desk likewise symbolizes a conduit to another place and time, where hours and miles have different meanings, where illusions become real and the real becomes a mere wisp of ephemera.
The raven is a deliverer of news of great portend conveyed simply to change one’s current agenda. This news by its very nature preempts the standard broadcast with a bulletin of import. The writing desk is also about disruptive or transformative change – the moment you begin examining something in enough detail to actually trouble with transcribing the experience you have already changed that something, interrupted its previous busyness. Its and your experiment and experience is altered as the process of observation becomes part of the observed world.
In truth, both raven and writing desk are scavengers, capable and willing of devouring almost anything. Both are ravenous. Both will indiscriminately use any substance for sustenance.
12 Feb 2003
