Will you just sit (the stillness and carving – such is destiny)
I was going to write something sporadic. something akin to the mosaic-style pieces I see decorating my algorithm nowadays, hung like anthropological mirrors of the modern manas. Instead, I want to write about my grandma's carved, wooden chair. In the corner. Just sitting there. Made by the eroding skin of a person, completely entwined with their craft. Made with an intention, scribed by every push and peel.
The chair, just sitting there. It's doing that thing to me that the paintings on my therapist's wall do. It's showing me something I cannot see. Something, in my blind spot, just sitting there. Waiting to be seen, heard, even loved maybe. The chair waits with no anticipation of fulfillment. Day-in day-out I glance at the chair, never to be seated. It holds a space in the living room, familiar, repetitive and dependable. Many rush past it, never to stop, to sit, to be still.
Why is the chair there, I deduce. The chair allows for symmetry, welcome and courtesy, I suppose. Just sitting there, it emanates how to simply be. The chair is not a throne; it will never be pressured into such austerity. The only pressure this chair will know, is the gliding plane of refinement. Or perhaps the weighted assurance of purpose. I envy the chair in ways, not all. For I cannot settle my desire to be close, touched and chosen by another. I could not be as noble as the chair if I tried. Sometimes people think this is a weakness. But unlike the chair, I have only two legs. Two legs and a will. A will for self-imposed demolition, unbeknownst to me.
My legs take me to places, far away from the chair. from the four-legged stability of home. and I wonder why. why must I do this. What do I seek beyond stillness. What constitutes my will, my unconscious compass, my cause for more. I stop. But I am not refined. I am foolish to think I am like the chair at all. This chair was not always a placeholder, an object of transaction, a marvel for subjection. This chair was a tree. A great arm of ground, stretching up for dear life. Nourishing, compassionate, witnessing. Witnessing me fall. Over and over again. Muddied knees scarred and torn. Closer and closer to the bone. How much of us must be stripped away, before we can become still. As still as the trees, only blowing with the wind. Still enough, to take the blow.
How many videos, pictures and posts must we see, before gaping holes, become a memory. The tree was cut, stripped and reduced. By gliding planes, another entity, born of destruction. Steady, still and forged. the chair was once an open wound, tended-to. now, still seating life, endlessly. Just sitting there. Come to think of it, I remember being placed on the chair as a child, with blood running down my calves. A stingy feeling of having it washed up. Being told; it will be worth it. Small hands gripping tightly to smooth, stabilising slats.
Older now. Collapsed mind too viscous for fixed framing. Too chiselled for foolery. I witness endurance. I relate as subject. My fear. My resolve. A blind spot staring back at me, unable to avoid. Every scroll, every number, every swipe. A heavy dose of dulling, devoid, distraction. For the pulling apart and piecing together can be difficult to digest, with so much new stimulus. And that’s it.
Will we sit. Be still. Just enough to let the stomach grow, in ways we so desperately need to dissolve ourselves. The chair calls to me. I can almost hear it in the way the varnish shines and lathers my eyes. She says whether we are human, a tree, a chair or a knee. Will you sit. Just long enough to see. The stillness and the carving. Such is destiny.
Notes: intersections of psychological reflection, meaning, everydayness, spaces (spatial theory), anthropology, Buddhism, meditation, spiritual/ personal growth, paradox, dimensionality, zen, evolution, metaphor, relationality