... ..room to live ....January 13, 2005   Each child has returned to college.  Now it is quiet within the walls of my sprawling estate, Greenmullet.  Actually, the house doesn't sprawl so much as it lurches.  I have decided to sit in the living room, so named because people avoid it.  There is room there to live.  One should visit a neglected room.  Unless you inhabit an igloo or a one-room apartment, you will have such a room.  Approach the room as though tracking wild game in a minefield.  The room should not be startled.  It isn't that these rooms are hostile; they are not.  Neglected rooms, like my living room, are simply shy and curious. Do not engage in activities.  Do not even read a book.  It is best just to sit and look.  The room will look back. I am following my advice.  I sit on a sofa of my own design.  It is not contemporary furniture unless, of course, you are a contemporary of Peter Lawford.  The upholstery is an organically synthetic fabric dyed in a pattern of broad, repeating stripes.  The cushions are tight and clinical.  The ends of the sofa and matching chairs are trapezoidal.  The brushed nickel legs taper like cones, the points of the cones stabbing the carpet.  I think the furniture deliveryman put it best when he said, "We call dis here fuhniture, Jetson fuhniture." Darkness has fallen.  As it is strained through the blades of the attic fans, the wind makes a high and lonesome sound.  Mostly lonesome. previous..|..current..|..archives..|..1st quarter index..|..next

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