This is the thing...
A
mah o gan
y py
r amid
To W
er
complete
with progressively larger, inserting, and smoothly gliding from fine
craftsmanship, shoe-boxed size drawer of graduating sizes and yet even more
thought after -fashioned with sturdy brass oval stamps in which to hold it's
nose ring pull-tab drawer handles, which reminds me of chestnut coated bull.
It poses to
be modern, art deco, trendy or futuristic, yet is foreign, obscure and in some
ways limited in capacity, it was never mine but comforts me with smells of
sweat and cedar, drips and chips.
In my
room there’s another thing...
Ic oaken s
cha tr
r uc
a ture
Antique, passe,
futile furniture design the secretary-not executive assistant, not girl Friday,
or left hand lady, the secretary with her rolls on top, secrets divided into
formal slots, sorted, lost in little cubbies and dark
holes in which only she knows the depth where bad ideas and great deeds
get lost…Significant or not, like handwriting that can only to translated by
its own hand tracing bread crumbs of ideas in cracks to get a nibble of what
was meant and intended, for what purpose do you stand?
Bellied grooves
, like a whales stretched gullet -you will not
leave! How to move a whale…? If I Google that Green Peace will be on me like
lemon furniture oil. For now, in this unadaptable environment, a fish out of
water, a roll-top desk situated anywhere. Multi-purpose morphed into antiquity,
you’re not even pretty. No form, no function, no adapter or converter, just a
chainsaw or a match. Desktop rolled closed in defiance.
In my
dining room
Here's the thing...
RI
NG _____p
ho
A ne
LI
NG
Is it a wooden bird box on the wall inside your home? What
kind of con-trap-tion is that?
Not a
bird box, but it did make distinct calls-One could say…Two blackened with age
but still bronzed bells at the tippy top a horn, a nose, or rather a
mouthpiece, whose ear horn goes to your lobe, though not the same shape. Mounted
a slanted shelf, with an edge so your pencil doesn't roll to take a message when
nobody's there, to write it down, spoke secrets will remain in echoes of old
machinery, or by convention as corded, grounded as could be yet for some reason
in its
dead language-it calls my name still in tinny tones when I bump it. It wont fit
in your pocket, or car, or even on the desk or counter-its art now. After
everything retires, working no more, it rests peacefully in nostalgia. Bronzed
baby shoe relic of the days when we needed an Operator to connect, instead we
are the principles inventing ways to disconnect.
In my
living room.
You know that thing...
KE
S L
ON-Key
ET
-that has
the skeleton key always in the lock? It's not so big, a delicate piece almost
feminine piece. Obviously for
decoration, like women’s pants pockets. A large housecat could fit in that
cabinet though-but things…they do seem to shrink when they age, or the other
way around, aging at it seems smaller, like reading print. Rich and soft dulled
walnut wood its nutty such items were carved, whittle by whittle, crafted by
hand, they call it “artisan”, which makes it desirable now. Transforming effort into ornate, brown grains
accentuate its lines
like it’s
own wrinkles, laugh lines I mean- slightly
risen, a design of futility, with a letter top drawer for unmentionables
and such, to keep things when in a pinch, or out of the blue, you would never
remember they were there-it’s a Justin Case.
So the thing is...
The things. The clutter and stuff of things that will never
go away. That was Grandma Bean’s, this was Grandpa’s, and that is Papa Don’s,
and this was my great aunt somebody’s, oh-it’s antique, well it must be
valuable, like a poet post mortem. I
simply wanted for a moment or two for you to touch with your eyes, through
these container words, drawing lines with your imagined strokes, where your
blanks filled in are better than mine, to see the piles of trivial necessities
we all live with. What matters to
things, nothing. But these things matter to us as silly as it is. Like clothes
we wear them, we stage them, we bring them into our home, planting their
history in our hearth too. All these
dusty old things, they may matter, they make themselves matter, standing in the
way of space and nothingness, replacing a void with an object to touch, to
dust, to lament over not being able to get rid of…
Not to discount, the matter of matter, that is not
"the matter", as they may say.
There are true “collectors” and such who themselves likely
have too much, yet pine, wood, and would need, want, must have, pining over something
is what we do. You're told “something old
and new,
some thing borrowed and something blue but here 's what those things truly do-
they
actually own you. Back in deeds and way, for a time, where layers build under,
in between, spots unseen for yours and my wonton needs of things which last and
are enduring, built well, built to last, sharing the inconvenience of our redecorated palpable
and wooden existence.
Re-saled,
up-cycled, retro to deco-what's old in new? Gently used, lightly worn, almost
true…
There's
always plenty more where ever that came from the family tree, down the road, moving
along to the crossroads, on the corner of “Now” and “Then” like leaves of
piles, heavy with neglect begging to know, just who owns who in The End.
Scan and postprocessing image by Hubertl [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
_-_WGA07062.jpg)
