Fading Furniture and Fading Books

A New Year is here

I’m sitting at my breakfast/dinner/coffee table (she’s a busy table) as I write this, with different angles of my face slowly tanned (one can dream) by the sun as it moves across the giants windows to my right. Living in an apartment with broken shades and large windows leads to one inevitable state- a land of faded furniture and faded books. Even on the particularly special days when I rearrange my shelf books (outside to inside, inside to outside), and cover my coffee table books (what else are throw blankets for), I still only delay the slow dilution and disappearance of color and pigment from their once bright, bold covers. The sun, and its assaulting rays, always wins. I feel a sudden kinship with the British Empire circa 1970 as I drink my morning coffee, for I am witnessing a slow, steady, and inevitable decline.

Tired, worn out, spent too much time in the sun and now in need of rejuvenating sleep- this is how I feel, and how my books and furniture look. It feels ominous to start the new year sick and not at one’s best, but even though we may stumble or trip into the new year, instead of the leap or dance that we’d hoped for, it is only a passing moment, and not the defining era of our lives, much less our year.

Good night 2021, good morning 2022. May we remember that we are never finished creatures, only a vibrating spirit in the midst of a lifelong process that will eventually end in this current form- and when it does, it will be the perfect time.

At least that’s what I’m thinking this morning, sitting on my fading furniture, surrounded by my fading books.