Thursday, May 05, 2011

Carpentry

Replacing the vintage 1972 giant single-pane window in the hallway with a smaller, double-glazed window resulted in considerable new expanse of wall space. The custom-built CD case that fit the previous space perfectly now looks orphaned, so I’m moving it someplace else and contemplating what to build in its place. Last night the girlfriend asked if I’d decided what to do there.

The real answer that played through my head went something like: I’m thinking of a sort of hybrid piece that incorporates features of the antique pie safe that sat on my grandparents’ back porch for as long as I can remember, maybe with a tin-clad shelf and nooks echoing other pieces I grew up with, because the full-sized pie safe is a little big for the space and I don’t have the pie safe anyway because one of my uncles claimed it before the auction like the other touchstone pieces of furniture I had hoped for from their house so maybe if I put some punched-tin panels on it somewhere it will look close enough to the real thing and honestly I don’t know how I’m going to design this because every time I think about my grandparents and their house being gone for more than fifteen seconds I spiral down into a place of loss and untethered-ness that is both unreal and unbearable and I cannot believe that I will never be there or talk to them again.

The answer I spoke out loud was I’m not sure yet.

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