The Perfect Chair

What is your perfect chair? Does life end in a “Lazi-Boy”?

When we think of a chair, we have a mental image of what it is. For most people it’s a four legged object with a flat seat and a back on it. In my mind, I see a chair of wood, the ubiquitous kind of my childhood forays through my father’s State Department government office. It was sturdy, handsome, fairly comfortable, and of minimal design. Any other chair could be seen as a variation on that theme. It’s no wonder it was so popular. Such a pure balance of many qualities is rare.

chair

But it’s not a platonic ideal of a chair. That chair doesn’t exist. My father’s economical office chair may come close, but the true ideal is only in the mind. This is a good thing. If an ideal could be real, we’d have no reason to live, no reason to strive, no reason to create, no reason to learn. We’d just bask in the perfection we’d created for all time.

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Color Math

I’ve never been very good at math. My mother helped me rote memorize the multiplication tables. I was an adult long before I could add a two numbers together fairly easily. So please check my math here. I could swear the total of these two aditions is greater than the sum of the parts!

THIS
orange peppers
PLUS THIS
plain kitchen
EQUALS THIS!
orange kitchen

AND THIS
plain workspace
BECOMES THIS!
orange back hall

Math is looking more joyful all the time!

One Day it Dawned on Him

A story about identity.

Jay threw him across the room. Luckily Dorn didn’t get too busted up. It just made a racket as he knocked over a small table with some “family” photos of the couple and their friends. He was uncannily lucky that way. Rarely ever got hurt. The impact surprised and shocked him at first, but then felt kind of good, tingly all over. He felt like he’d just awakened from a dream.

Dorn’s whole life he’d gotten what he wanted, done what he wanted, gotten away with almost anything he did. For a few seconds now, he felt he’d arrived at the station, actually stopped in the middle of the room, instead of passing by on the train, while others had to stay behind and live their lives slowly and deliberately.

He was good at almost anything, and popular as well. Since he improved any situation with his presence, most people thought he was there just for them. And that was true. He liked pleasing people, but it wasn’t really him. Alone, he was lost. He needed something to match, something to adorn, in order to be something himself.

He took this jolt from Jay to be a sign. Someone had been watching, and now he was in for it. But that didn’t happen. Jay apologized profusely, and Dorn again had the upper hand.

Just like always.

They had quarreled before, but only when things got too strained for Jay to remain physically passive, which was work for him. He was a man of raw emotion, not a lot of detail. That’s why Dorn loved him, because Jay wasn’t like him. Dorn had complex emotions, but he hid behind the detailed analysis game, picking apart an event, looking at things objectively, until he convinced himself, and almost anyone else, that he was right.

“It’s tough being a chameleon” he thought. “No one understands you because they can never really know you. And even you can only guess what your next move will be.” Dorn used to have a dream where he was in a play and forgot his lines. We’ve all had that dream. But he’d learned to make them up as he went, and pretty soon, just flowed into any situation as if he created it.

While Jay retreated, Dorn sat there on the floor, thinking. He could just keep going with the flow, the usual, and use the new power he had over Jay to get more out of him, or he could try something new. He opted for newness, which didn’t surprise him. Dorn thrived on chaos. It’s so pregnant with possibility.

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Glittering Commentari 11, LargeTony

Wow, I’m feeling a little giddy. A few weeks ago I asked Tony to submit some comments to the Glittering Commentari list. Today I got his answer.

For anyone who doesn’t know him, this guy is a natural storyteller. His blog is one of my favorites. He has a gift for bringing you along in his narrative. He’s light hearted and meaningful. And never pretentious. He’s also very, very sexy. All of him.

According to him, out of his thousand comments, he chose one by me to submit! Boy does he know how to butter both sides of a guy!! I’m just blushing like a little Catholic schoolgirl.

Here’s me kissing a tree after dreaming of Tony.

mc kisses tree

The post this comment refered to is Sunshine on my Soldier, one of his best among many.

My comment was:

My, oh my, Tony, you can spin it, unravel it, perk it up, drive it home. My rapt attention became my wrapped attention. Who needs a web cam!!!

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