To be clear, I have a long standing love affair with Justin Currie but it's stuck in time. Having listened to him speak a couple of times, more recently than not with that lovely Scottish Brogue scrubbing off some of the hurt spots
(why IS it that some sorts of voices can do that for no good reason at all?)
I don't think he'd be surprised in the least. I could have picked any point in time to be stuck in and he wouldn't be surprised in the least. I am stuck in 1992. Del Amitri was formed sometime in the eighties, put themselves on the map with a hit single I've only heard recently in 1989, and produced at a reasonable, steady pace unitl 2002 under the 'benign dictatorship' of Justin Currie and Iain Harvie. Currie released three solo albums (none of which I'm aware of being aware of) between 2010 and 2017 and the reunion tours started up sometime in 2013. Not sure if those hit my radar either but Downfall Tonight followed by Always the Last to Know are apparently part of the soundtrack of my life that plays in the background on a perpetual loop which, fortunately continues to grow.
A note on the growth of the soundtrack we all have playing on whatever media it was born, in the back of our heads: sometime before I was sixteen, maybe even as young as eleven, when I noticed the difference in musical likes and dislikes between generations and later demographics in conjunction with the constant change and growth/development of music and the different genres in the music industry, the kernel of concern which became the root of fear was born. At what point, I wondered, do we stop being open to new music? At what point do we become fixed in a single or just a few genres (I KNOW I was too young to have the word genre the first time I had these thoughts)? Later I had a similar line of questioning when it came to recreational drugs but that was more about the wistfulness that happens sometimes when you know you are going to grow up and some things will be left behind; you just don't know when or what possible rite of passage will cause the leaving. The similarity between the thoughts is the impetus behind the closing of our ability to hear which is really the closing of a cultural circle, the final drawing of a line which separates Us from Them. The operative phrase being, 'the ability to hear'. Later, I decided I never wanted that to happen. I wanted to maintain the right to continue to choose from each new wave, some thing or things that I liked and wanted to hear and I wanted that soundtrack to get bigger.
It did and it does and so Downfall Tonight doesn't come around very often because it takes the soundtrack a while to cycle and the newer stuff is often causing stops and starts, but when it does come up, the whole of it washes over my head, comes back around, picks me up and deposits me wet and somewhat disoriented in a basket of loosely defined memories for all of three minutes and thirty seconds. Other than that I never think of it. I never think of it except this morning when I was trying to shut down a Facebook feed that's been driving me batshit and there it was.
Under the heading of things you really didn't need to know about me but are worth the confession because:
- The human condition is funny as shit
and:
- The human condition is funny as shit
The Shit That Makes Our Hearts Go Pit-a-pat
(there's nothing up there, by the way, but there COULD have been - swipe left, swipe left, swipe left...)
A couple of years ago I turned on a search for dining room tables on Facebook's local tag sale sites. I wasn't aware of what I was causing at the time. I opened one of the four tag sale groups I frequent and typed dining room table into the search bar and brought up the current selection of dining room tables. Not much, at least not much in my price range or not what I wanted in my price range.
I know I've written about this in the past. In this part of the country, mostly this isolated area outside of New York City, maybe it's even limited specifically to Fairfield County; I'm not really sure, some odd things happen with regard to the actual value of material goods and actual currency. It isn't perpetual but it happens often enough that it's worth paying attention and worth not spending any money until you find exactly what you're looking for. Assuming you can wait. I can almost always wait. I've had a bare house before and I can have a bare house in the future.
I'll admit right up front that I have a weakness for dining room tables. Specific dining room tables from a specific era. Also chairs. I have a weakness for the chairs that belong with them. There. I typed it. You knew we were going somewhere anyway, right? If you're S, you have a pretty damn good idea what I'm dancing around. You know I'm hopeless and you hope my father forgets that first one which, by the way, left my attic last Friday along with the four chairs and they will never return and we can all forget that ever happened. It never happened.
Material goods versus actual currency: Sometimes people make errors in judgement when they purchase furniture or fixtures or carpets or drapery or cabinets or a whole lot of other things. Mostly furniture if they're doing something without a decorator and that only happens if they're only doing one or two rooms or just trying to spruce something up. What happens most often is that a piece of furniture is purchased for a room and it doesn't work. The furniture is custom and cannot be returned. They're stuck. Most people shrug and decide to sell it at about 50% of the purchase price which is reasonable and more than fair and they generally find a buyer pretty quickly. Sometimes a seller just wants it the hell out. As in, right this effing second I can not look at that again and if I hadn't paid through the nose for it I'd put it in the garage.
A photograph is taken and it hits the local tag sale at 10% of purchase price and if I happen to be in the market for just that thing then BANG! Hello, I am your buyer and I will be there in sixty minutes with a check to hold and back on Saturday with cash and a truck (if it needs a truck). I know it has hit the market because Facebook tells me.
My two very specific living room sofas were purchased within four days of each other, same manufacturer, same model, one custom, one not, one nearly brand new, one probably fifteen years old but it's very hard to tell, for exactly the same amount of money. You cannot tell they aren't the same sofa (other than the upholstery) until you put them side by side and notice the manufacturer changed the dimensions slightly over the last fifteen years. But the style? Not even remotely changed. They are red and gold and if I had to actually shop for them, I wouldn't even have walked in the store. In my recent purging and in the last twelve months as I've looked around at the things I've collected in the last thirty years, not the things I've accumulated, the things I've intentionally curated. Those things I've searched for, picked up and discarded until I've judged a thing exactly, or close enough to what I was looking for, most often without a conscious understanding of the why or how of a thing. Not everything was reached for; some things found their way into my home without asking and curated themselves.
My mother's great aunt's bedroom furniture showed up when I was seventeen and had all my life slept on makeshift, with hand me downs that often barely qualified as bedroom furniture and most times didn't much notice except that slightly delayed phase I went through in middle school when I would have sold the collective soul of my immediate family for the French Provincial bedroom set from sears with the twin size canopy bed. I didn't need all seven pieces (my friend Terri had all seven pieces jammed into her room and I'm still not sure what they were all for) but I would have taken the bed with the canopy, the tall dresser and the vanity and left my family in the dust.
You have to admit (OK, you don't, but work with me), this stuff is heinous. Good thing it morphed. But really, I WOULD HAVE LEFT MY FAMILY IN THE DUST FOR JUST THREE PIECES. MAYBE JUST THE BED AND THE CANOPY. MAYBE JUST THE POSTS AND THE CANOPY AND I WOULD HAVE FOUND A WAY TO MAKE IT WORK FROM THE GROUND. Many, many years later, I did have a canopy bed. I had an ornately beautiful four post bed onto which I chose not to put the canopy or even the cross rails because it would have interfered with the ceiling fan. But I thought about it. I thought about at least those rails. That was part of the marital furniture that went right out the door at 10% of the purchase price...
The desire for the princess bed played behind the soundtrack unnoticed but morphing slowly or maybe percolating. I didn't think about it in my bed which was not really a bed, just part of a sectional without the bolsters that worked well enough even though the twin sheets had to be tucked in an awful lot. I fit. The dog fit (miraculously I got my 98 pound self and my 110 pound Great pyrenees onto that bed every single night) and I fit and later when no one was looking, my boyfriend fit. But not with the dog; she wasn't having any of it. I have no actual memory of where my clothes went after the big old multi-colored dresser from the salvation army with the drawers that stuck except for the dead of winter, was finally hacked up for firewood by my father. I seem to remember some very small pine thing. But I can't be sure. I can be sure it wasn't relevant.
However.
When I climbed into my mother's great aunt's bed, onto a mattress old enough to qualify as hazmat today, with it's curved footboard scooping me into an elaborate embrace, well, it had me. It had me at the curved footboard that said safe, safe, safe, and the insanely (to me, at the time) wide and deep dresser with the mounted mirror, and that freaking wardrobe. That was all. It had me.
I had to leave it behind but later it caught up with me. It is the cornerstone. I don't have to keep it but probably I will. It can go to my girls, it can go to my son, or I can take it back. I can keep it. I certainly won't keep what I have now. There isn't a thing wrong with it and someone will want it but it is only a placeholder.
Why furniture? I don't know. It isn't all furniture. I guess I'm thinking about the furniture, or I have been because those are the big pieces I need to cull, the things I need to be aware of. I classify them as, things that appear to be part of me, things that have use and fill this space, and things that will stay here to stage the house but otherwise could go right this second if necessary. Oddly enough, one piece really ought to belong in the curated section. I bought it nine years ago with the cash in the envelope after selling seventy-percent of the household furniture, knowing exactly where it needed to go and exactly why and also believing it was a curated piece. It is beautiful. Someone will love it. I think the reason I don't love it is because it is too big. I notice there are three things I really don't like.
- I don't like too big
- I don't like non-functional
- I REALLY don't like too much money. As in, it cost too much money, which means I haven't bought anything new except electronics and very small pieces of office furniture in a very long time.
The first dining room table was a disaster. My father called it a rescue and he was right. It met almost none of the criteria except that I loved the style and to date I hadn't managed to get my hands on anything close to what I wanted. I didn't expect to ever get my hands on anything close to what I wanted. All of it is so far out of my price range I haven't been willing to look. Antiques. I have a weakness for antiques. Many antiques are only to be looked at and if you want them restored they actually lose their value. It isn't that I mind personally the loss of value, I feel guilty about it. I'm destroying something that ought to be left and maintained as is. An antique is history. I suppose if you can restore with materials from the correct period then you aren't doing as much damage but you're still doing damage. I feel the same way about old houses. I know they have to be kept up to code if they're to be lived in but please, for the love of God, DON'T FUCKING UPDATE THE KITCHENS AND BATHROOMS BEYOND WHAT'S REQUIRED. Don't tear the floors up. Go live in a new house and leave this one alone. Oh, shut up, Alecto.
Also, restoration is not something I'm prepared to do myself or pay for. I paid way too much money for a non-functional dining room set. Later I replaced it with a heinous (to me) facsimile for $200 at an event called Minks to Sinks. I got it for $200, the table and the chairs, because on the last day everything gets cut to the bone just to get it out from under the tents. So they don't have to send it to the landfill. The antiques went to the attic. I hated the replacement but it was utterly functional and with the chairs and the extra leaf (maybe even two, I'm not sure anymore) it was absolutely in the right price range. I closed my eyes and thought of England. I wished I'd taken the farm table back in 2009.
When I put the dining room table search in motion I was already in that zen state called watch, wait, and leave your feelings at the door. I didn't have the energy for another broken heart. Periodically a Facebook notification would pop up with a list of tables and chairs.
Nope.
Nope.
Nope.
Hmmmm....
Nope.
Holy shit.... oh hell no. Not for that amount of money. Lady. I think you PAID $12,000 for that thing. Why the hell would anyone give you $8,000 for it now? Because it's in perfect condition. Got it. Nope.
Houses get remodeled, gutted, started over from the ground up and the furniture is literally put out on the lawn. And it is GONE in ninety minutes. Nope. Not paying that. I also noticed all the furnishings were pretty much the same. The people all do their homes pretty much the same and five years later they redo their homes, pretty much the same. Nope.
Nope.
Nope.
Nope.
Whoosh. Heart stopping breaking crying weeping sniveling into the keyboard no no no no no no no I am not paying that much for that table even if it IS 10% of the purchase price even if it IS in perfect condition. It does NOT come with its table pads. Why the hell isn't she including the table pads? I see. It doesn't have pads. It has one perfect oblong pad which is an actual cover and it's going to fit her new table perfectly. Grrrr. Table pads cost a lot. Most table pads are custom and don't let anyone tell you they aren't. The pads would have cost more then the table. Grrrr.
Nope.
Two weeks later the table popped up again. I sent a message requesting a viewing.
Refer up a few paragraphs to the part where I show up with a check. Not cash. A check.
On the way to the viewing I swung by a BOA drive thru and took out cash. I told myself it was just in case I was going to buy the thing and then I wouldn't have to go to the bank on Saturday. I had my checkbook. I wasn't being ridiculous.
When I walked in that house I wanted to turn around and walk back out. There wasn't anything wrong with it and it wasn't any bigger then any of the other houses I'd walked in and out of but there was something not quite right. It wasn't wrong either, it just wasn't nice. It had a cold, edgy undertone going on. I first encountered that particular brand of wrongness when I was cleaning houses in this area thirty years ago. It took me about two clients to recognize it and politely decline the business with no explanation offered. Not even when they called me back and demanded one (and they always did). There's plenty of that around here, those are the houses that sell at 80% of the purchase price and I'm not meaning to trash an entire demographic, it's just personal experience. I didn't want to deal with her and I almost left except I remembered I was looking at a piece of furniture and holding the money. I wasn't looking at a potential client likely to sap 80% of my energy while producing only 20% of my revenue stream. Maybe. If that.
I really didn't want to be there. That's how badly I wanted the table.
{Interlude: for those enlightened few who have spiritually raised themselves above and beyond material wants, turn the volume down, I can hear you all the way over here; I am already aware that I'm going to hell and will starve to death when TEOTWAWKI happens and/or have my innards noshed like a scooby snack before my heart stops beating during the next zombie apocalypse. I hear ya. I'm pushing your buttons. Simmer, it will get better when you actually surrender and are able to see in shades of grey again. Possibly even fifty ;) sorry.}
I went around the corner into a cavernous space I really can't explain. I think it is a kitchen with a massive dining room size eating area that can't possibly be a dining room because there is no separation between the spaces and the style of the house doesn't support that configuration. The table was squeezed into what looked like a breakfast nook and it was covered with an oversize cover which, it turns out, was the custom pad, just too big because both leaves were out. The ad indicated a slight 'ding'. When she pulled the cloth off and turned on the overhead light I nearly came to my knees. There it was, the dark cherry, high gloss table that had been percolating right on top of the lizard brain for years. It was perfect. Except for the 'ding'. The 'ding' had to be pointed out to me. Seriously. I couldn't see it.
I handed her a pile of cash and said I'd be back on Saturday at 10 AM.
I spent the first six months treating that thing like the baby it is. Was. It got lemon oiled weekly. It was protected from all manner of things. Except me. It was not protected from me. I bought it placemats because I didn't want to cover it with a cloth and I didn't have pads. The placemats were textured, seriously textured (they were really cool) and put scratches on the surface. Elizabeth and I built a bookcase in the dining room (because it was January so it was too cold to do it outside or in the garage and the dining room has the most natural light) and while I managed to not use the surface of the table for too much, I did slap the drill down without thinking and Elizabeth threw two boards right across the top and when I screamed even I thought maybe my toe had been cut off.
Later I decided to work from the table and gently put my notebook down on the surface. Gently, so gently. I put my mouse to the right, mousepadless because who the hell uses a mousepad anymore, but I put my coffee on a coaster (genius, pure genius, so there's a spared spot on the table). The collected gunk wasn't coming off with a cloth and oil. I used the scrubby side of a sponge. I should be in furniture jail right now. I no longer work at the table and this is why I cannot have nice things.
But I accept the table. I accept that it will never be perfect again. I accept that it will continue to acquire scratches and 'dings's but at a less alarming rate. I accept that it has curated itself and that it may yet again become a workspace. I have a very large blotter that, while rectangular, manages to work well enough at the end of an oblong table. I accept this because the furniture that makes up my compact workspace may not come with me. If it doesn't fit, if it's just too much then it will not come. It has not been curated.
Not like the corner cabinet my mother bought me when I lived in Stamford and Elizabeth was small. It holds china, nothing but china, mostly from my first marriage which I am likely to give up well before I give up the family stuff although I worked hard to round out those pieces over the years. On top of the corner cabinet are the toys from my mother's childhood. They are brightly painted wooden toys my brother and I played with when we were small and visited my grandparents in St. Louis. There is a jack in the box that worked for a while and then stopped but I cannot imagine parting with that. It followed me all the way here.
There are not so many things as I thought there might. As I clean out closets and kitchen cabinets and empty the attic a little at a time and find it easier to dispose of books then I ever thought it might be, there are only a few stumbling blocks.
The need or desire to curate, which is not quite the same as acquire, appears to be gone. Periodically I have the need to acquire for functionality which is very different. Mostly I just don't because I'm aware that I will have to get rid of it and if it won't be useful for staging then I'm going to have to come up with another option or do without. I don't want more stuff.
But tables. Man. Tables. I had to kill that feed. It's a dating site. It's like Justin Currie standing over my shoulder saying, look at that! Would you look at that! Just feel it, just for a minute, close your eyes and then walk away, you know you can do it...you can fight this thing
(apologies to Mr. Currie for the slight adjustments)
The light is turning red and I guess I'd better go
Before I make a grave mistake and let my feelings show
And twenty miles away it waits alone for me
But when I try to picture it, you're the one I see
And in another situation I could put up a fight
But you will be my downfall tonight
So the night is coming down, drowning us in blue
And it all points towards the things we know we shouldn't do
And as I look at you and I fall under your spell
Well I know I should be thinking of it sitting there covered up in stuff
And when faced with temptation you know a person should stand and fight
But you will be my downfall tonight
Be my downfall be my great regret be the one table
That I'll never forget
Be my undoing be my slow road to ruin tonight
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