Yesterday I made a writing nook in my bed room. I moved my computer from the endless clutter of my study, the desk covered with so many grown-up things I have to do but always postpone. My writing ideas have lain lost beneath them for too long. I’ve started rearranging my bookshelves, and now I have to negotiate my way through the piles of books on the floor. They’ve been sitting there a while.

The Italians of the Renaissance gave birth to the idea of the studiolo, a room set aside within a house, or palazzo if one were lucky, used for both contemplation and study. It was a place to pass the hours in literary or scientific pursuits, to enter the world of the arts and of the learned. As Machiavelli wrote to a friend:

“I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them… for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexations, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass into their world.” (Machiavelli, in Hale, Literary Works of Machiavelli, 139)

Both the design and decoration of the space reflected the wealth and aspirations of the owner. Within, all things had their carefully chosen place, but when in use, the studios were indeed used; chaos and clutter were used as a stimulant to the creative spirit.

In Florence’s Casa Buonarroti, which once belonged to Michelangelo, I almost missed the studiolo of his nephew. It’s a tiny room, almost an afterthought, hidden in a corner. Shutters seperate it from the main room, but windows open onto the outside world and flood the tiny space with light.

I don’t know what led to the sudden decision to rearrange my study. For sudden it was. I’d been trying all day to do some grown-up things, and failed miserably. I just couldn’t face my study. So I replaced the chair by the window in my bedroom with a desk my beloved had bought me years ago. It’s a small wooden desk with a sloping lift-up top and many small drawers - both beautiful and totally unsuited to this modern age. I balanced my computer on the top, and to my delight discovered our temperamental wifi reached to this distant corner of the house. Two mismatched shelves now sit on either side, a bedside table has come to my aid to rest my mouse (for there is no room on the desk) and so my little studiolo came into being. As I write I look over the trees of our chaotic acreage. Birds dart through past, sometimes pausing for a walk along the railings of our balcony, often with babies in tow.

I now sit in the same spot where I spent so long watching my husband as he lay dying, trying not to disturb him, but now I face the other way. I do not feel I have turned my back on him, for I look out the window, to the same view he had as he died. He is still here.

Like my study and my bedroom, the furniture of my mind has been rearranged. I don’t know if my writing will improved, but I feel more creative. Perhaps something has been unblocked. The grief is still there, and I know it always will be; it is a part of me, as is my need to write.

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