Serious Nonsense — On the Art of Being Uncomfortable

Putting a Light on the Strangest Things

I’ve changed the furniture in my life, like others change clothes, but not for fashion or status. Always seeking comfort in furniture, I’ve found that interminable discomfort ensues. What suits one place is undesirable in the next and, because I have moved a lot, there has been a lot of furniture under my bridge. However, it is not only when I move that I change furniture, so let me throw this delightful light on my furniture fetish.

I’m not fond of yellow-glow lighting, but I adore my gold and crystal chandelier. When it was first hung, I often lay back on my pretend-sofa bed to gaze up at it. It still thrills me, reminding me as it does that I am a tart at heart. Not that anyone would guess now, but I once harboured lust for red patent leather high heels that would have made Julie Bishop blush, not to mention Hollywood’s Dorothy of the red slippers in The Wizard of Oz. Now, approaching 80, I have descended into the endless tedium of utility, except for domestic adornments and my eternal search for comfort.

Seriously though, when a piece of furniture stays with us, it learns who we are and then robs us of comfort. We think of furniture as inanimate, but I declare it has a mind of its own and is as fickle as we are. Do we not feel an urge to stand if we sit too long? And, doesn’t sitting beckon after we stand for a while? Life is in perpetual motion, as is my furniture.

When Things Stick

If we try to let go of an item we love, it clings. Sometimes, when hate is embedded in it, it will do the same thing out of spite. When an item is meant to move on, it will sell immediately on Marketplace; if not, you’ll have trouble giving it away.

A friend recently bought a new couch for the delivery of which she had to wait 18 weeks, as is the way in current climes where COVID and shipping delays rule. The delay meant she had months to sell her old sofa, but nobody on Facebook’s Marketplace wanted it despite price-lowering to the point of insanity. Her notice posted in our building attracted zilch interest, and Vinnies would not even come to look at it although it was a beautiful, new-looking cream leather piece of Italian design.

A volunteer organisation called Second Chances finally agreed to collect my friend’s old lounge but not until weeks after the new one was due to be delivered. She had to endure the squeeze of two sizeable sofas in a tiny space for a very uncomfortable while.

At the point when my friend decided in desperation to send her dear old lounge to the tip, it accidentally found an unusual home in a halfway house. Someone she knew who knew someone who worked in rehabilitation said they’d take it, and it now happily provides luxurious if temporary comfort for a rotation of unfortunate souls newly released from gaol. It once again basks in loving appreciation.

Katherine, Melbourne and Aldinga Beach

When I retired, I shipped my German-crafted microfibre aubergine two-seater, bought while I was in the chips in Katherine in the Northern Territory, to Melbourne where the boiler blew up in my second-storey flat and ruined it. It was my last sofa for a while. The end of an era.

I soon moved from that flat into a high-rise public housing studio for the elderly in Prahran, which has become the setting for my second novel, High Rise Society. There, I switched to a click-clack sofabed which soon came with me to Aldinga Beach in SA as a spare bed that my eldest son slept on in the outside studio until it gave up the ghost. A temporary sort of piece, it sturdily saw us both through tough times.

In Aldinga Beach, my first lounge suite was a locally manufactured three-piece suite in apple green, a good colour for healing which I suspect I needed then. Its settee was soon relegated to my outside studio and the two chairs to my bedroom because they were too lightweight for heavy-duty visitors. I replaced them with a pair of oversized Californian armchairs that were over $1000 each (on special) from now-defunct Le Cornus and I dare not tell how little they sold for at Unley Auctions three months later.

I finally found a two-tone brown and tan lounge at Nick Scali, just right for the dog and me, as they say in fairy tales. When I moved into a retirement unit, Nick Scali went with Clarrie to his new home.

Three Desks and Office Chairs

The Aldinga Beach house also saw three desks pass in and out of its doors. My first was a small glass thing until I bought a sociably round dining table which let me convert the old rectangular one into a desk with a lightweight rug cover, something I learned from my Dutch mother-in-law many years ago.

After a bit of a windfall when I went back to full-time work aged 69-71, I replaced the table with a white corner setting as though somehow, I was established. It was at this desk that I wrote The Publican’s Daughter.

The new Aldinga desk invited a posh office chair so I exchanged my comfortable Ikea with the expensively uncomfortable chartreuse job you see in the photo on the left, recently exchanged for white Temple & Webster’s comfort in Manson Towers, where my current desk is white glass. (The Aldinga Beach desk did not fit into my tiny unit. In fact, the removalists had to take it away to give away on moving-in day!)

It Gets Worse

Immediately after moving into Glenelg’s Manson Towers retirement village, I had to downsize. With arrogant disregard for ageing and flush with the proceeds of selling my house, I had bought in advance, a high fashion button-press sofabed from King Living Furniture. It was lovely to look at. Wonderful to sit on to read.

However, the name of the shop should have warned me; King Living furniture is clearly for kings, not old ladies like me. While the sofabed idea allowed me to use the bedroom here as a studio and it matched the uncomfortable chartreuse office chair, for daily life, it was a bugger of a thing.

Any fool knows that a sofabed must be made anew every night and stripped every morning but, as you can see, there are two long back cushions on this piece, too heavy for me to lift when I buzzed the bed to full size at night and I had nowhere suitable to store them or the bed linen in the morning. So, I once again sold high-dollar fashion for pennies and replaced it with a real bed which, with covers serves as a sofa during the day.

The Utter Discomfort of Furniture

As for armchairs, I bought a cream leather rocker to start village living. When it upset my arthritic hip before surgery, I swapped it for a lovely burnt coral velvet number for half the price from Harvey Norman and I loved that until I needed something I could sleep in overnight when unwell.

These two pieces quickly found the best of homes. A delightful, fresh-faced young tradie whose wife was expecting their first baby took the cream leather and a heavily pregnant about-to-be-first-time mum, the burn coral velvet, both to be used as feeding chairs. These two chairs literally ran away from me for a better life.

Now I have a ruby leather recliner from Wohlers and even it has become uncomfortable after I spent weeks sleeping on it with four crush fractures in my spine last winter. As the Buddha says, nothing stays the same, life is constantly arising and — dare I say it, in decay. Decay sounds better I think, than passing away — for now.

I wrote the poem Serious Nonsense a couple of years ago, long before I decided to expand the theme here.

Revealing Stuff

If we agree with the notion that one’s house is a symbol of the self, then my changing furniture is symbolic not only of my circumstances but also of my inner life as it has changed and changed and changed. Having moved so much, I can’t possibly talk about all the furniture I’ve left behind but I adored and mourn the jarrah table in the poem. I used to polish it lovingly with fragrant orange oil in Darwin at a time when I entertained a lot. Is it the table I miss, do you think?

I know that many spend changing lives in the same place, replacing some things, piling others on and filling garages with items they cannot bear to let go of. Some are probably borderline hoarders, others might feel that what they collect is their legacy. However, now that we live in a world that changes constantly and seems to go faster and faster every day, it is conceivable that I’m not as alone as a mover and furniture changer as I might once have been.

Cleaning out and moving on is my way. I pay speeding fines instantly to forget them and equally quickly dispose of anything that no longer has a function in my life. My wardrobe is regularly culled and I delete texts from my iPhone immediately after a conversation.

The same goes with cupboard and fridge contents and, sometimes, friends. I left my sex life behind when I shaved my head. I am a ‘clearer-outerer’, but not when it comes to memories. Those I cherish. Few know what a peripatetic and unusual life I’ve led, but I’ve loved every minute, as though I’ve wafted through it all, high on fragrant orange oil.

Tip

As writers, we need to render strange that which is normal or normalise the strange. Think about your furniture and see what you come up with. What does it say about you? How useful is knowing the complexity of these everyday things for your writing, settings and character development?

Happy Writing

Wattletales