I like wood. It satisfies my senses in a way that few other natural products do. Leather is up there, but nice wood is pretty nice. I don't think about wood a lot, but sometimes it occurs to me that I should know more than I do about flora and what it produces.
We've been using our fireplace for the first time since we moved into the house. I keep buying boxes of "Hot Wood" at the hardware store. It's not all the same kind of wood, but when I peer at it, I can only say that some of it is reddish, the barks differ, etc. It's not like I'm any better at fauna--I know some birds and I can tell the difference between a coyote and a dog. The big fan plants that wave outside my window every day? I just think of them as the big fan plants.
The staff in my office wanted to rearrange and get new furniture last year. They agreed on faux mahogany with black accents. Not the direction I would have gone. I prefer lighter woods, and if what you really have is woodgrain, not wood, why bother? So the Assistant Director wants a new desk and she thinks I should get one too. She keeps showing me pictures in the catalog.
I try not to be petulant about things, but I'm not coming into my office everyday to woodgrain mahogany. I'm just not. The woodgrain oak I have is just a tap less hateful. I'd prefer maple. Or just office faux tops--you know the kind of marble-like stuff, like my office table. I like knotty pine and real cherry. And cedar. I could spend all day with my face in the little cedar box my mom bought me when I was little.
I don't know why I'm so uptight about this stuff. I love fake. Las Vegas is one of my favorite places.
I even like birds that you're not supposed to like: jays, starlings, house finches.
But when it comes to wood, I want real. I have a little wooden box shaped like an acorn. I admire it every day. Just a little. It reminds me of the past, of my grandmother and I searching for acorns under the oak in her yard, of the deep piney woods of the South, of the giant trees in Sequoia Park. It even evokes the fan plants. It does not remind me, even a little bit, of woodgrain mahogany with black accents.
3 comments:
Perhaps you'd like a little pressboard to go with that? Good luck getting anything real in your office--wood's just too darn heavy. On the other hand, if you've pissed off the right people (apparently, 50 egomaniacal English profs aren't them), you won't have an office to misdecorate. Yikes! As a matter of protest, I suggest getting rid of your desk altogether and replacing it with 2 sawhorses and an old, painted door lain acrost. That'll show 'em. ; )
Amen, sistah! Veneer is for pussies.
I don't even know what wood the "woodgrain" of my desk is supposed to be. Cherry maybe? It is red, maroon really, the same color as the hair on a hipster girl -- you know, not a natural auburn or strawberry blonde but the sort of dark too-red hair that proudly declares its been dyed. My desk aspires to being a hipster girl. It lives the dream I gave up long ago.
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