i've been thinking lately, well, about a lot of things, obviously, because that's what i do for a hobby. but i've also been thinking about selling my couch. it's not being used right now, and i'm in a place where the money could be put to good use.
but a friend was asking me about it, and how it was a nice couch. then, i remembered having written something about it when i first got it. i went back and read this piece, and remembered, and saw how, in some ways, i'm very much in the same place that i was then, though my parents seem to have a greater sense of acceptance. or resignation, either way, visits tend to go much better.
anyway... i'm keeping the couch.
June 19, 2006
i had a new couch delivered saturday morning. it's really very exciting - a dark-chocolate leather sectional. buying a piece of good furniture is a weighty process, a serious commitment. there's considerations of money, style, and longevity.
my last couch had taught me that vital lesson about pieces of furniture that you'll be sitting or laying on: the vast majority of couches or beds will feel fantastic when you're out shopping. this is simply because furniture shopping by its very nature is a tiresome experience that makes you want to sit, or, if possible, lie down on anything available.
furniture stores, at least all the ones i could even begin to afford shopping at, are topographical marvels, upholstered labyrinths designed to keep you wandering for miles and miles. they are invariably crammed with families of no less than five, swarming around any number and variety of battleship-sized sectionals. the parents sit on various pieces, staring at the fake televisions as they debate the relative merits of mauve chenille vs. the latest in turquoise microfiber, glancing only occasionally and disdainfully at their children, who are diving from one piece of furniture into another, even if the other piece of furniture is an innocent bystander.
the previous couch had seemed pretty decent sitting on it in just such a store, but as i recall, it was in a relatively quiet corner, far away from the shopping hordes. red-hot spikes protruding from the bottom and back would have been a welcome mental and physical distraction at that point. as it was, there were no spikes of any kind, and it was nicely cushy, in an unobtrusively dull neutral color. i went for it, and a complementing chair. only with more focused and practical sitting did i discover that the couch was far from ideal. but i was committed, obligated, even, and have remained so for the last seven or eight years.
in those years, i've occasionally found myself with friends in furniture stores. i'd offer my opinion to them, but occasionally would spot something that sparked my interest, and i might brush tiny muddy footprints off of a sofa to try it out.
i usually discovered that i had no idea at all how i normally sit on a couch. do i like to have something behind my head, or just under the neck? how high do i like the armrest? is this couch too short from back to front? if my entire lower torso is swallowed up in the cushions, is that too soft?
i found the new couch doing the same thing, shopping with my ex-roommate. i was briefly deterred by other options, but i forced a new discipline on myself. i did the sitting, and tried to put myself mentally in my living room, in front of, say, an evening of multiple X-Files re-runs. In this sort of self-hypnotic state, I felt the crick develop in my neck on one couch deep into the fourth season. On another, I realized that the cushions folded in around my head in such a way that i would have no peripheral vision should the alien bounty hunters get past my cats.
on my most recent trips, about to move into a new apartment, i knew that i was ready to buy. but, while laying, sitting, and crouching in a variety of positions on a variety of couches, making faces at the children and their tired-looking parents, i was nagged by two guilty thoughts. first of all, i already had a couch. because my ex-roommate had a much nicer couch at the time, my own had resided for the last year at a friend's house. but that couch, which had almost immediately fallen out of favor with me, had seen and mostly survived a hard life.
the cats had had their way with it, and it sported a sort of fringe effect at the corners. when my cat Oliver would get one of his recurring urinary tract infections, he apparently found the center of the couch a less threateningly painful place to relieve himself. the subsequent, frequent washings of the covers had shrunken them to the point that they strained over the cushions and pulled apart at the seams like a worn pair of jeans stretched perilously to their limit on a person heavily in denial.
lest the couch's state be blamed entirely on my pets, humans had done their part over its seven-year life. years of persistent, consistent sitting and lounging had compressed the foam cushions into flatter, less geometric, unappealing shapes. scores of people in various states of cleanliness, sobriety, and disarray had sat and slept on it, sweat, oils, and drool soaking the wide weave that had already incorporated a rich tapestry of cat fur and dirt. and in the last year, the couch had been in another house, assimilating the detritus of people i don't even know.
the other guilty thought was that i didn't have a job, and really shouldn't be buying furniture.
when, however, i saw The One, my sofa soul-mate, any such thoughts disappeared. this was a couch finally done correctly, as if god had built it from one of my own ribs. it was a sectional, but a sane one, without the puffiness, hideous color, reclining bits or horrid oak remote control holders that i once believed were essential to sectionals.
it managed to look just retro-modern enough to be of enduring style, or at least enough that it wouldn't be dated by the time it was delivered. the corner of its "L" shape beckoned softly to me, and when i sat there, it received me perfectly, my body settling into a position that even i couldn't conceive fidgeting from. my arms settled into the cushions, though not so high that they'd fall asleep, my legs immediately found a variety of comfortable options, and the pebbled-grain leather was cool and just slightly stimulating against my skin. i was a happy man, and there was no question that it was the right choice.
so, saturday morning, i was still shaking off a mild physical hangover and a larger emotional one from the night before. i was chatting with my new neighbor when we heard the sound of a large truck, punctuated with a brief barrage of ripping and rending noises. moments later, the furniture store truck pulled in front of my apartment with what looked like most of a tree attached to the top of it.
two men carried the two pieces of the sectional up to my apartment, removed them from their plastic-wrap cocoons, and deployed them in my living room. as i thanked them and held the door for them, the driver looked back and said, "damn, man, that's a lot of couch, there."
my cats and i stared at it from the edges of the room for a while. they approached it first, sniffing it, and then i did the same. mmm... leathery. i sat on it and they eventually joined me, and we perched on it and looked around. it was, indeed, a lot of couch.
the feeling of guilt began creeping back in, except that this buyer's remorse bore no relation to color or style or construction, or even cost. instead, the question was not whether the couch was worthy, but whether i was.
in my mind, large leather sectionals reside in homes that people own. those people aren't necessarily or even probably perfect, but i imagine that they generally have their shit together. they have careers. they always have money in the bank. they own property. other people, maybe even their parents, respect their accomplishments.
at 37, my résumé, my finances, and so many other of the listable, quantifiable aspects of my life, are decidedly unimpressive. they are, in fact, often depressive. in march, i quit my job, wanting to leave the law altogether, deciding to change my life into something more closely resembling what it should have been, what it should be.
that hasn't gone so well. i was just lucky to have gotten a job a week earlier.
getting that job, combined with recent weight loss and the deep tan and improved muscle earned tone from weeks of doing landscaping work, had incited a week of mild rejoicing and renewed hopefulness. i started feeling and acting like myself again, maybe even got a little overconfident.
all of that, though, disintegrated in a matter of hours last friday night. a night out with some cool new people, yet i ended up feeling worthless again, and a bit stupid for believing that anything would have changed. i stormed into my house, pulled open another beer, wandered around with the notebook computer looking for my neighbor's wireless signal, and i wrote.
I’m back, and everything’s the same, everything’s just where I left it: the reflection in the mirror, the past, the self esteem, the future. it’s all the same. did I really think five pounds, quitting my job, being a mediocre runner, anything would change it all? how stupid could I be to think I could change the fact of who I am?
yeah, I coulda been a contender. you know the rest.
another night, more money, more hope, more “confidence,” same result. time and situations don’t change who I am. this is who I am.clearly, i did not feel worthy of much at all, much less a nice leather sectional couch.
i will grant, to be fair, that i'm a professional self-recriminator. i've made a lifetime career of questioning myself and my worth, which for most of that lifetime drove me to try to be a better person. but now it's become more of a burden than a catalyst. it seems later in the game, and self-recrimination has increasingly become an end in itself, a simple statement of fact, left at that.
in recent years, i've cycled in and out of jobs and relationships, fought for respect, struggled with finding something meaningful to define me. of course, once i left high school, my own critical abilities continued to be matched and surpassed only by that of my parents, so when i'm in the middle of a particularly self-loathing phase, it's best to avoid putting myself in harm's way by, you know, communicating with them at all.
sunday, unfortunately, was father's day.
i'd say it generally went ok, which is not true at all. mom is excited these days about this michael bublé guy, a young crooner type from canada. she popped in a DVD of one of his performances, and on the plus side, it was an hour or so of me being present, without any potentially treacherous conversation.
on the other hand, i watched him do his thing on stage, and ugly things stirred in me. envy, jealousy. here was a guy that not only deserved a nice leather sectional sofa, but could purchase dozens of them without guilt. more importantly, he was not an attorney. and even more-more importantly, he was singing, performing, doing what i'd always wanted to do, but failed to do. and ironically, he still had my mother's absolute respect, and somehow, this guy, this... Canadian, was even a suitable catalyst for shaming.
several times, she repeated what he had said in some interview: "my dad was a fisherman. he doesn't have to do that anymore."
i was happy for the elder Bublé's turn of fortunes, but i felt yet a new burn of guilt. on my mother's part, it may seem completely innocent, but years of experience have revealed one of her biggest go-to themes - ambitious kids who are driven to succeed primarily by the desire to do nice things for their parents.
mom seems to miss the fact that neither she nor my father are, or have never been, fishermen. ok, actually, my dad had a bass boat, complete with blue glitter clear-coat, and he entered a bass tournament or two. but you know, we're not talking "deadliest catch." and, while we were indeed solidly poor in the 1970's, they had both already done a tremendous amount of work to get themselves out of that situation, and into a very comfortable lifestyle where cash gets paid for things. like Hummers and Austrian crystal chandeliers. credit cards are only a convenience, and just a way to get frequent flier miles. there's just not really a need for my help, and they've leapt so far ahead up the income ladder, that i would need to be pretty extraordinary to be able to "help" them, should they need a second home in the Bahamas or something.
that, however, is clearly not the point. there are other things at issue for my parents, for my mother in particular, and always will be. things that riddle our interactions with easy condescension and insult.
then, during dinner: "the other day, i saw this really good interview with dan rather and the attorney from houston that's defending tom delay... gosh, what is his name? he's an attorney. from houston. he has this very big ranch, and, well, you're not going to like this, but i'm going to say what he said. he said if you think you're a good attorney, look at how much money you make, because if you're a good lawyer, you're going to make a lot of money. otherwise, you're not a good lawyer, no matter what you think.'"
as i began to try to leave, already late to meet some friends, she brought up my young cousin's recently-announced intent to go to law school after she receives her mechanical engineering degree, because "she wants to have a big house and lots of money. she knows what's important."
outside, on the driveway, as i edged towards the smelly car my friend had loaned me while my own well-beaten used car was being fixed: "don't you want to have things that show you're successful? this house and everything i have, they're like trophies. don't you want that to show you're a success?"
i wanted to tell her i had a nice new leather sectional, and try explain to her the concept of wanting something on its own merits, not just to fill some literal or figurative space, but i knew it would just play into her hand. she'd decide it was an indication that i want trophies as desperately as she does.
I'm still trying to escape, almost to the car, and she told me about the young and "very successful" Korean couple they had met in New York. she had told them about me, how i was an attorney, wanted to be a writer, and that i run. apparently, Mr. Young, Successful and Married to the Beautiful Young Korean Woman That Wanted to Call My Mother "Mom," said, "wow. sounds like he has too many different things going on. it's going to be hard to be successful."
car door open... so close... but now, she's talking about the new couple that moved in down the cul-de-sac into a non-descript mcmansion... yeah, yeah, my age, yeah, very successful, got it... got that... and i finally made my own passive-aggressive statement:
"yeah, well, you know, i guess you guys should have had more kids..."
they chuckled. dad said "no, one is enough." mom, however, voiced no argument.
afterwards, i didn't feel like hanging out with my friends as planned. i headed home, opened up the door, opened up a beer, and settled into my spot in the corner of my new nice new leather sectional. my cats were somewhat comforting, but i know they mainly like me because i'm their only semi-reliable food source.
what is the measure of a life?
monday morning, i came to work, began scanning through reams of documents. i didn't feel like talking to anyone, and i went through hundreds and hundreds of pages. many of the emails from one company feature signature blocks with goofy, wordy, and ultimately meaningless little taglines for the author - "I maximize the leveraging of my coworkers' efforts going forward, while remaining mindful of my clients' need for a proactive, solution-based culture."
but then out of the hundreds of emails, i found one from some rogue employee who opted for a quote from Albert Einstein: "Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."
Einstein understood that in more ways than one, measurement is relative to the position and speed of the observer. i thought about my friends. some are successful on paper, the kind of success that lenders are interested in. but a lot of them don't have a lot of money, a lot don't have impressive titles or careers. i would never judge them the way my mom would. they may laugh a little or shake their heads at my choices and the situations i work myself into, but at the tend of the day, the good friends only judge me by my own happiness.
unlike my mother, those people are able to separate success from value, trophies from accomplishment from meaning. trophies are only memorabilia of accomplishments, not the accomplishments themselves. trophies fade, discolor, tarnish, break, burn. they get lost, stolen, packed away, shredded by cats.
those people have accomplished things, but have also achieved perspective. many know that the only accomplishments that matter come from value, from effort. trophies don't - can't - always tell that story. they can't testify to the measure of one's character. they don't say with any certainty that you're a good person to be around, to hang out with, to call a friend, to spend a life with.
there's a lot to be done in my life, a lot that hasn't been done. i still feel the sense of my life slipping away from me, of losing the hope of it being, in the end, something meaningful and memorable. but i have to keep my standards clear. the fact that i don't own a house, control a company, am a killer attorney, or am ready to retire doesn't really matter to me or my friends.
i do want success, but only insofar as it makes me and the people that i really care about truly happy. i want accomplishments, but i want them to speak well of who i truly am, and who i work to be. anyone can make a lot of money, build a resume, win awards, but what do they really mean at the end of the day?
so yes, for now, by my own standards, i have failed. or perhaps i just have yet to succeed. but right now, if nothing else, i have value, and in a way, i even have my own trophies to attest to that. and when those trophies visit, i have a nice leather sectional for them to sit on.
