A Different Sort of Civility

Summer 2001. Woods Edge in Durham, North Carolina. I hear an early knock on the door. Gwen Spizz excitedly apologizing tells me that there is a loveseat left at the dumpster. "I know you don't like the killing of furniture so I thought we could bring it over together. It's got couple of casters." No need to ask if it needs repair. Gwen knows I will mend it. Her expression, "The killing of furniture" has stayed with me ever since. It could be considered a subset to my Theory of Inanimate Objects. The Reincarnationists believe souls come back in all manner of living creatures but what if I'd like to return as a washing machine? At a very young age it seemed to me people did not treat their belongings with appreciation and respect which led to their falling apart. I remember reading that Emily Bronte was polishing the staircase the day she died. Now that's a writer after my heart. She took time to attend to objects. I was saddened when living in Eureka in a house built in 1851 and divided into apartments, one of which had been a bookstore, to discover white plastic chairs strewn around the backyard. At one time somebody had planted roses which grew in wild chaotic exuberance. I thought the garden a lovely setting for reading in the afternoon but I wasn't going to sit on something moldy and gross. I didn't know the chairs were white until I started cleaning them up. In a fit of alarm at their neglect, I took some paint from an art project and wrote, "Be Kinde to Chairs" across the top in fancy script. I felt a lot better. The tenants didn't notice but much of what I do goes unnoticed except for the recipients of the attention. The chairs fairly preened. I guess you could call me a Restorationist, a devoted recycler, instead of a Reincarnationist. I have rescued doors, frames, clocks, teapots, sofas, table, laundry baskets, turned a computer into a planter and revitalized a Wonder Horse. It had lost its handle bars and part of the top of the mane was missing. I threaded a wooden spoon through the holes and glued it with Goop, which Ellen Sachtschale, the potter, suggested. I placed a hat with a sunflower barrette of the "brain damage" and festooned her with ribbons and beads. I gave her to Jennifer Brady to hang from the rafters of her house when I moved from Roanoke. That's one of the rules: pass it on. As soon as I was finished with my Intensive Care of the various misfits, I would take them to Goodwill and wish them a fruitful journey. The horse remains only as the profile picture on Facebook and the Blob. A wicker settee found a place with Vietnamese newlyweds with instructions to send it on its way if they ever wanted real furniture. Is this all because of abandonment issues? Or a form of, "Don't bite the hand that feeds you," or is it simply Feng Shui which declares that the placement of furnishings (appreciation) is a stepping stone to harmony. Perhaps, it is the fact that I saw so many with no possessions when I was an impressionable child. I don't analyze it. I just do it. I was pleased when Henry about four years old, proudly told his little pal who was crying over a broken toy, "Mimsey fixes everything." Yes. At least she tries.

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...may the blessings from the Land of the Discarded roost along your path...

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