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jane
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1:41 a.m.
the furniture in this apartment has a way of epitomizing the relationships in this apartment. since i got here, the first prominent occurrence was the glass tabletop shattering, what my mother explained as a fusion of mine & sarah's energy fields. even before that, though, was the 80s style geometric patterned rolling chairs that liz brought to furnish the living room: an example of the instability of the set itself, & i was not surprised at liz's anger when isabel reupholstered only one of the chairs or chariots or fucking hardwood floor sleighs - this was *clearly* an attack on liz & her taste - even though the rest of us agreed on the level of distastefulness the original pattern encompassed. next was the large leather chair that isabel purchased while intoxicated on painkillers - a symbol of prestige & ostentation. this became her throne, she owns the living room now. her living room slash art gallery slash kraft korner. & sarah'sorange chairs - one butterfly chair & one of those round plastic half-egg chairs; this one, having been found on the street, has an apt crack in its concave belly, so two seat cushions were thrown over it for comfort purposes. & these are just the chairs, the humble beginning or introduction to the silent war that became seating for ambling guests. anyway, sarah's seats were her attempt to distract the extreme combatants from their battle; the appropriate color to lend some brilliance to the room (bright poppy electric tangerine streetcone orange); the room, ironically called the living room when the walls are stained with the dark crimson splashes of a bloody battle, & the midnight curtains to passively aggressively conceal such a combat.
& then the day comes when i move into a room embracing liz's furniture. do i unpack? do i place my belongings in the skeleton of her bureaus, knowing that some indefinite period of time will pass until she comes & takes it all away & i am stuck with my possessions (few albeit sentimental) on the floor of a very empty room (tangent: how does one measure emptiness?)? this is the power she holds over me, through her dressers, through her desk, through her bed - despite her distance. so this weekend she's come to pick up some more of her scattered belongings - pillows, a teddy bear, a couple of boxes, the coffee scoop, &, oh yes, the wicker shelf from the bathroom. not only does this leave the bathroom shelfless, it leaves the rest of us scratching our heads. who would want that shelf anyways? sarah recalls the day it arrived at the apartment - immediately it made her feel as if she was in an old home in boston; she found it discomfort in the ease of being able to visualize the companions of such a shelf - the smell of old hair & dust, crusty toothpaste, rust rings from metal containers...you get the picture, i'm sure. everyone has an aunt maude or grandma jean who has a carpeted toilet seat cover, or the actual pad that makes a gas-escaping exhaling sound when you sit down whooooooosh
so why, i ask, would liz take the shelf down? to me, the answer is clear: because she can. she is teaching a lesson to the rest of us - how we took her belongings for granted & now we're going to pay.
so, we'll get a shelf. i'll get a bed, a dresser, a desk. we'll get a coffee table, or make one. i'm just wondering what furniture is going to go next.
don't worry, i'll keep you posted.
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040830
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