Seeing It All

Some days I sit where I can see three rooms of our house with a single sweeping gaze. And some days I just see:

tables and chairs that need dusting
tilted paintings and scratched hutches,
dust-bunnied oak floors and cat-haired carpet,
lamps whose bulbs need changing and chipped plaster walls.

But other days, I lean back with a coffee mug cradled in my hand, and look beyond stark reality, the kind money buys or lack of time neglects.

I see more.

The table is surrounded by friends, laughing over nothing, really. And the chairs are pushed back, chatting-style, while people sit with gold damask dinner napkins upon their laps. Lamps glow here and there, candles flicker upon the table's center while shadows play in corners.

And country folks in the paintings shake themselves long enough to call me to dream a little in their countryside, before settling back into their poses. Likewise, my old friends in dreamy worlds between book covers beckon me in collective crowd murmurs. The painted hutches smile with dish gifts and trinkets from cloudy estate sale Saturdays.

And upon wooden floors are remembered-footsteps of people no longer here. The carpet has cushioned us while we rolled around with the cats beneath the portraits of sepia-toned people watching with their camera-captured eyes.

The walls surround me like a hug, though they never divulge intimate memories from years they spent hugging other people. Their autumn-colored coating will keep our life secret, too, for those who come after us.

It all depends upon how I look at my home--and my life, as well.




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And no, that is not my living room in the photo above. heh.


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To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk... Thomas Edison

Imagination is more important than knowledge... Albert Einstein