The Rug

So as part of this whole family reshuffling I have inherited or acquired some furnishings from my grandparents' house. It's a mix of sentimental things that I liked when I was a kid (salt dishes and blocks and books), useful things (a lamp, a trunk, the odd-sized bed I'm now sleeping in), and decorative or valuable things. The one thing I can't believe ended up with me is an oriental rug that used to be in the dining room. I've always loved it but never imagined it would ever be mine. I still don't believe it. It is the most beautiful thing I've ever owned.

I got it home and discovered that it is too big to fit in any room except one. It fills the front room, which has never really been much used -- it's our gathering place for big dinner parties and has been serving as Housemate's art studio and play space, strewn with blobby objects made from plastic bags or inner tubes or ripped and rolled up cardboard.

So what's interesting is how this simple thing, getting a nice rug, has changed the dynamics at home. The rug changes the whole room and makes me want to take the room seriously. I want to move the couch in there, and make it into a place I spend more time. Which means moving Housemate's studio space. Which meant noticing how I really feel about some of these huge three dimensional "peculiar objects". I called them "peculiar objects" when we were talking about the move and her plans -- she'd gathered tons of them and had them all around the room and hanging from the ceiling and things. I had thought that was just for an exhibit or something but it turned out she wanted to keep them around all the time. And I discovered the truth is these things make me sort of uneasy. I think they are interesting to look at but I don't groove on sitting and reading a book underneath a spiderweb of suspended scotch tape or a giant webbed bag of plastic balls, or a larger-than-life creature made of cardboard. Anyway, saying they were "peculiar objects" wasn't very sensitive of me.

It feels a bit like a complex logic games puzzle. The rug can only go in the front room. Sherry really loves the rug, and wants to be able to sit in the room with it. Sherry is uneasy in the presence of large unconventional 3 dimensional art objects. Housemate needs a studio and creative space. It needs to have light. She finds it useful to have the contents of her mind, and the products of her hands, around her so she can think about her next creation. There's a certain amount of creative clutter in this active space. The answer either involves us switching bedrooms, because I have a sort of anteroom to my bedroom which is currently a small library or study, or involves changing the configuration of one or both other downstairs rooms -- but the light's not great in any of those, and they're both quite public areas that are passageways to the rest of the house. Or we keep the front room as a studio and playspace, that happens to contain a fantastic rug.

Just talking about the rug and the logistics of what to do with it turned into this somewhat uncomfortable discovery and conversation about Housemate's art and creative process, and made me feel really conventional for what I really want to do -- move the sofa in there and hang up a couple of big traditional paintings I got from my grandparents as well. I'm ashamed to be so conservative.

Comments

[ML]

I think there's one thing you can do now no matter what you ultimately decide: get a rug-pad to put under the rug. They have these great super-thin ones at Hard Cider Farm that would do just fine. It will protect the rug and lengthen its life.