Falling down tangents & the Living Room
It’s 3:34 pm on a Sunday and I’m sitting on a brown, leaf imprinted lazy boy in the corner of my living room - writing. Previously my eyes were glued to the apartment-sized tv, but then the Chiefs won and I stopped caring. Now things are quiet, too quiet…
I whip around to find a dead body! Definitely less than ideal, having just vacuumed, that corner area always the hardest to reach.
The fictional dumb thought tangent continues.
“Mystery is afoot,” I think to myself. “Let’s narrow down the suspects. It couldn’t have been the butler, since I don’t have a butler. That’d be too lavish for a 700 square foot space.”
Anyhoo, I’ve never even seen a butler; are we sure they even exist?
No butler (hypothetical - assuming they’re real) hung out in any of the middle-class homes I lived at during my life’s tenure; I assume it’s beneath them.
In contrast with my religious views, I only believe in things I can actually see. As such it’s difficult to win an argument with me.
Well-researched Person A: “Hey Jackson, what do you think about the recent political turmoil in Israel?”
Me: “It’s hard to say; I’ve never been to Israel.”
Person A after a pause: “What’s that got to do with anything.”
Me: “Are we sure it’s even real?”
Person A, a bit dumbstruck: “Yeah. 100 percent. You believe in maps right?”
Me: “Which map are we talking about? I believe in the world map on my apartment wall; other maps, I’d have to see before I believed.”
Back to the living room. The original idea for this post was a lengthy description of my living room but things fell away from me… So far, I divulged the following details: brown lazy boy, dead body in the corner, world map on the wall. Only two of those details are true.
They say appealing to the five senses aids in imagery, but I question how four of those (excluding sight) help. For half my furniture, they taste like fabric; the other half tastes like wood. Did anyone gleam anything from that last sentence; see what I’m saying, kinda pointless. I don’t smell anything.
Strike that, I lit a candle and now the room smells of Threshold™ Rose + Cedar. How’s that for (forced) imagery? I imagine the room used to smell worse (bachelor pad, cleanliness wasn’t a virtue, type of worse) so probably why my girlfriend brought over the candle in the first place. Not sure why I’m defending myself here but, I would never go outta my way to buy a candle.
I’m just learning this now, apparently there’s a second NFL game on today. The Bucs and the Saints. It’s 5:31 pm now, so that seems like a day's amount of writing in.
One last thought: Has anyone heard of the singer Sammy Rae? One of her songs is titled “Living Room Floor”, so it vaguely relates to this post. My entire music pallete consists (unapologetically) almost entirely of pop, but Sammy Rae is my go-to indie recommendation. Living Room Floor isn’t her best work, but definitely check out: “Kick it to Me”, “Denim Jacket”, “Talk it up”. According to Spodify, I was in Sammy’s top 3% (97th percentile) of listeners for 2020, so (if you don’t understand how percentiles work) I’m basically her biggest fan.
