One day earlier this year I took an axe and destroyed the crap out of the armchair at my apartment.
Crazy!, is that the image you’ve got in your head by now? Well, this is not a story about anger management, or something like that. I destroyed the armchair because it was getting old, the seat was falling through, and we had no room for it anymore, and moving it around each time to watch movies or whatever was too much of a job, cause it was that much heavy. My girlfriend who originally owned it, said it was time for it to go. So I took the axe and…
It’s been a while since I did furniture demolition. I did it several times professionally, when I worked for a college. Chairs, desks, that kind of stuff. With those things, what you see is what you get. Just have to strike a bit harder from time to time. But not this armchair. It took me about half hour to deal with it. It was an old-timer, from those days when they made them to last through storms and bombing, I guess. Leather bound into wood, wood into intricately tied ropes, and then the staples were crazy thick!
I was working at it, swinging the axe like it was a battlefield and I was facing the orcs. Harder, deeper, and all that. As I was doing that, and the cuts in leather were opening more, and I could see how intricate the chair’s structure was, I was gaining some appreciation for the work that was put into it.
It made me think of “While You Were Sleeping” movie (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114924/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) when Sandra Bullock’s character sits down on the brand new rocking chair made by her new friend. They are in his large truck, and she sits down on the chair in front of the opened sliding door, and she rocks in it gently, clearly enjoying herself, because she trusts him and his work, and she is safe. It is made that well.
I kept thinking of that while cleaning up my mess and taking the monstrosity that I’ve turned the armchair in to the dumpster. And I thought of something else…
…of the way people are made: bones, muscles, sinews, nerves, tendons, joints, brain cells. And not just parts of all kinds, but also connections. How it works so well. People mostly are very resilient, they walk away from falling down, from being beaten, from all kind of physical damage and disaster. Our bodies allow us to do that. We walk and lift stuff, sometimes not even realizing we train our bodies that way, preparing us to stand longer against whatever life throws at us.
People sometimes walk away from car crashes. People rise from grief of profound loss. People come back to life from the ashes that destructive addiction and continuous substance abuse burnt them into. People regain trust in relationship after being burnt badly. And they manage to not only co-exist in relationships, but build them stronger, and invite others who were broken, so they can heal too.
There are days I don’t believe anything good will come out of us all being in the same pot. And then other days I’m amazed we are still here, and we still cooperate, and enrich each others’ lives.
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image was copied from here https://www.casa-padrino.de/en/casa-padrino-luxury-leather-armchair-vintage-black-leather-armchairs-art-deco-lounge/echt-leder-moebel/sessel/a-91873 and bleached and dismembered by me. thankyou.
Trezvennost II 