I do not want to mislead you; I was not suddenly and nobly free of attachment to material things. It's just that I was moving into a tiny studio apartment, all four hundred and three square feet of it. (If you have trouble visualizing a place of that size, think of it like this: it's bigger than a breadbox but smaller than a, well, slightly larger breadbox.)
This move necessitated ridding myself of a few (million) things. One of these was a great big green Ikea sofa. I don't know how to describe its color except like this: imagine you have Hunter Green. Now take away its horse and gun, so that it is pursuing prey on foot and hurling rocks. That would be the approximate green of the great big green Ikea sofa.
Anyway, I have been without a sofa for more than two years.
My partner, Tim, moved into my little apartment sometime this past spring, and from that moment on we swore--swore--we'd get us a cozy two-person sofa, the better to perch together and watch terrible movies and worse cooking shows on my newish flatscreen TV.
But with one thing and another--by which I mean Tim's dizzying work and studying schedule coupled with my generalized fear of the world outside my mind--our furnishings remained as they were.
An Ikea chair sat in front of the TV--which rests on a small rolling table --so I could take in Giants baseball games while Tim studied. To watch something together, we'd roll the table so the TV faced the bed, where we'd loll happily. Not a bad way to watch TV, true, but not a couch, either.
"We really need to get a sofa," I'd mutter, every week or so. Tim would nod. And that's where things would rest until the next week. "We really need to get a sofa," I'd mutter. Tim would nod. And that's where things would rest until the next week. "We really need to get a sofa," I'd mutter. Tim would nod. And that's where things would rest until the next week. "We really --"
And so on.
Recently, our neighbor decided to move from her studio to a larger apartment in our complex. Imagine our delight, then, when she asked us, last week, if we knew anyone who needed a sofa.
I can't say we did a faux tribal dance for joy. But I can't say we didn't, either.
When she showed us the thing, we decided it was perfect. I'd like to tell you what kind it is, but I cannot. On the day during my childhood when they were handing out the Homosexual Cards, the ones providing innate knowledge about the worlds of fashion, furnishing and general style, I must have been splashing in a mud puddle while singing Beatles songs.
All I know is that the sofa fits the two of us perfectly. And it is blue. Ish. (?) And it has thick cushions. And it has fat, round armrests. And, by God, Tim and I couldn't wait to get it into our place. We and the neighbor agreed on a price, and I wrote a check.
There was just one hitch. Our neighbor and her boyfriend, with whom she was to be cohabiting in the larger place, wanted to move the--our--sofa into their new apartment.
They were awaiting a different sofa, my neighbor said. Until it arrived, they wanted to hang onto this one for a couple of weeks. After their new sofa arrived, they'd bring ours over. The new sofa was being given them by in-laws, or outlaws, or something. Details remain hazy; by this point I had completely tuned out, chagrined unto aphasia that the new blue (ish) (?) sofa with the thick cushions and the fat, round armrests wasn't going to be in our apartment right then.
But one bears up under life's calamities. With our chins up, Tim and I returned to our place, sofa-less for the time being. I'm proud to say that neither of us said a bad word about our neighbor; this was largely because I was otherwise occupied shrieking and banging my head on the floor.
Isn't it funny how it is darkest before the dawn? (Isn't it funny, too, how very much it hurts to bang one's head on the floor?)
Yesterday, a miracle occurred. The definition of "a miracle," by the way, is "something awesome that happens in a way that's completely consonant with what I would have wished to have happen, but that either I didn't expect or didn't dare dream might happen." The Pope and other spiritually-inclined folks might disagree with this definition, but then, I'd like to see their sofas.
Tim was showering. I was slouched on the Ikea chair, watching the start of the last of a three-game Giants-Braves series. The apartment door, as it often is, was open, to facilitate air flow and to admit the area's halcyon sounds: birds tweeting, wind hissing in the treetops, tires shrieking and metal rending when cars crashed on the nearby road.
Suddenly, my neighbor appeared in the doorway. It was her moving day, and she appeared not a little bedraggled. Sweeping aside loose strands of hair stuck to her cheek with perspiration, she said in a voice mildly barb-wired by exasperation, "Do you guys want the sofa now?"
She and her boyfriend had decided--wisely, I would say--that to hump the sofa up to their new place, only to have to hump it back to ours (which is mere feet from her soon-to-be-old place) was madness.
"We can live without a couch for a couple of weeks," she said, with a perkiness I deeply admired and distrusted.
Her boyfriend and I made short work of shuffling the sofa from her apartment to ours. Tim and I thanked them and bade them good luck with the move.
And then we sat on our new sofa. Soon Tim left for an appointment in the city, and I spent the afternoon splayed on our new sofa, watching the Giants cream the Braves, 13-4. (A miracle!)
I would here like to say something in defense, if a defense is needed, of lounging away whole days on the sofa, something considered verboten in harried and hyper-scheduled lives.
The world can seem a scary place. There is terrorism, climate change, war. Kim Kardashian now appears to be as perennial (and, often, as partly cloudy) as the sky itself. There are natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods and Donald Trump. The economy is slow, and too many people live in poverty. Nothing is what it used to be, even if it didn't used to be what we think or thought it ought to have been.
In the face of these challenges, it has become my fervent belief, borne of diligent experimentation, that there is nothing--nothing--in life so terrible that it cannot be mitigated by a couple of hours spent lounging on a sofa. It may be one of humankind's great achievements that, from beings who once lived in caves with only boulders to sit on, we have advanced to the point at which there are seemingly endless choices in sofas, couches, futons, divans, settees, chesterfields, davenports, and other furnishings appropriate for extended lazing.
With that in mind, I hereby propose what I like to call The Sofa Challenge. I suggest that you spend at least an hour a day lounging on your (or a friend's) sofa, and see if that doesn't hugely improve your life.
I have lots of ideas about how to make the Sofa Challenge go viral. If you wish to hear them, you (and/or Tim) will find me on the blue (ish) (?) sofa, the one with the thick cushions and the fat, round armrests, and...
Zzzzz...
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