Tuesday, June 13, 2000

2:32 a.m. Here is a picture of our totally groovy and happening new chair. It is round and curvy and I believe it is the beginning of all that sixties dissolution that we now look back so fondly upon.

And here's why: When you sit in this chair, you do not want to get up. You just drape your arms over the sides and you just stay put, as if you don't know how to stand up and get on with it. It's the strangest thing. You also desire a martini, because of the suddenly appropriate shape of the glass, but that's neither here nor there.

So, we got some new-old furniture. It's the first such purchase in oh so long ... from a real store and not from the street or a garage or a yard. I really wasn't sure about this stuff when I saw it on Sunday when we went out looking for a better desk lamp for Igor.

We were merely wandering around, being part of the Sunday sunshine, when we happened into one of the many wonderful stores on the street named after the oddball founder of Venice, Abbot Kinney. The chair looked cute and all and I would have continued wandering through the store if the owner hadn't urged me to sit down and see how comfortable it was.

That was it, you know. I just didn't want to get up. We chatted for awhile and there was Bossa Nova music playing and you know how it goes. This is the stuff I didn't have. I was there, but we didn't have furniture like this. We didn't know anybody who had furniture like this. Magazine stuff.

I won't go into all the hand-me-downs from the '40s and '50s we lived with back then because they were handed down with love and affection and they are did the job. We didn't have retro or vintage stuff -- just a bunch of old things -- and chic had not been conjoined with shabby in any serious person's vocabulary.

We did have a passing moment when I thought I liked "Mediterranean" with its wrought iron and carved leather but I will spare you and I will forgive myself because I was only 19 years old and I don't think I'd ever been out of Pennsylvania, except for an afternoon at the shore once.

But I've always loved interiors and I've dreamed through more magazines than you can imagine, and in all that glossy page-turning, I never longed for curvy furniture. I've always liked square things and things that are rustic. Fruit crates are a special favorite of mine: very square and very rustic. And now, suddenly, I find myself unbearably happy with this gumdroppy set of wicker bubbles:

I don't know what's come over me. I spent several hours this evening looking at googly mod lamps online, actually wanting some of them. And then there's the color -- I don't know what level of monitor and gamma you'll be viewing this photo at, but believe me when I tell you: those cushions aren't red. They are red-orange, persimmon, or just plain -- orangy.

Aren't they just the happiest things? I smile as I type and you know what? The second I finish this piece I'm going right back in there and I'm going to turn on the lamp and I'm going to sit in the chair and I'm not going to get up until I figure out what I did with my youth or who put the bomp in the you know what -- whichever comes first, baby, because I am a mod and groovy chick and I'm sitting and I won't get up but I will get down.