{"id":962,"date":"2014-11-18T17:28:31","date_gmt":"2014-11-19T01:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/?p=962"},"modified":"2014-11-19T21:57:57","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T05:57:57","slug":"in-which-we-rebuild-civilization-from-the-comfort-of-our-living-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/?p=962","title":{"rendered":"In Which We Rebuild Civilization from the Comfort of Our Living Room"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other night, Raymond and I were sitting around in our \u00e2\u20ac\u0153living room,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which consists of our beloved plush brown sofa that we shipped from Pittsburgh to the West Coast, plus a few square feet of surrounding floor space. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve each got a folding tray table, supposedly for eating on, but instead we have piled them with our respective messes. We take our meals from plates that we hold in our laps.<\/p>\n

Raymond\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pile consists mostly of reading matter. His library books cover topics like social justice, Bach, and how to rebuild civilization in the wake of catastrophic events. Typically, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just one of these topics per book, but sometimes there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an overlap. Resting askew on open copies of the New Yorker<\/em> and the New York Review of Books<\/em>, mingled with an e-reader, a t-shirt, or a moleskine or two, these look ready to slide into a catastrophe of their own, although they never actually fall.\"CCI19112014_3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My mess consists of polymer and pulp: clear boxes of paper scraps, smeared and scratched and dotted with acrylic paint. Brightly painted paper scraps stuffed into envelopes and freezer bags. <\/p>\n

The more enterprising paper scraps liberate themselves from their boxes and bags. I corral them back from the floor and the sofa cushions but never seem to get the table entirely clear. They congregate around the bottle of liquid matte medium, the perfect glue to compensate for my lack of patience and precision. Unlike the glossy stuff, which crisps up into shards, the matte medium can get all over your fingers and will just peel off when it dries. Other landmarks include pens, scissors, and black trays that used to hold frozen chicken tikka masala. The world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s smallest art studio, my little folding table bustles like a village.<\/p>\n

So when Raymond and I sit on the sofa, we are often in several places at once, shipping off through various methods of cultural transport. Raymond picks up the New York Review<\/em>, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s outside the walls of Troy with Mary Beard. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell you how many times we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been to the White House with Olivia Pope\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re reading this in 2014, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible that the same is true for you.<\/p>\n

On the night in question, however, having caught up with all available episodes of Scandal<\/em> and anything else worth watching, having even zip-lined over a tropical forest and dangled a few perps out the window on Hawaii 5-0<\/em>, we were listening to a podcast. <\/p>\n

Heckling a podcast, to be exact. The author David Gilbert was reading Steven Polansky\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s short story \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Leg,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in which a father, helplessly alienated from his wife and son, refuses treatment for his injured and eventually festering limb. As Dad tried to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cauterized\u00e2\u20ac\u009d his wound with a scalding-hot towel, we shouted our objections, to no avail. (Olivia never listens to us, either.) <\/p>\n

After a few days, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unable to walk, and his distracted wife gets around to asking, half-heartedly, whether he might want to go to the doctor. At this point, the crowd\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat is, Raymond and I\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwent wild. We gave up trying to straighten out the characters and started hollering at each other. If your leg ever starts stinking and oozing, nobody around here is going to be asking. Your ass will be at the doctor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. <\/em>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s me with the bad language. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Emergency room,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Raymond. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Get him to the emergency room.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only as I write these words that I realize that this essay is about more than sitting around on the couch. Though there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been no literal festering, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve encountered loved ones who shied from\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor bristled at\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsupport that they needed. Unlike the characters in the story, we are blessed with family and friends who are warm, attentive, even vigilant about one another\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s well being. Still, we sometimes feel a need to reaffirm our interdependence.<\/p>\n

Rolling around on the sofa, howling and laughing, clutching our own uninjured legs, we are also extracting promises from each other. Offering them, too:<\/p>\n

I promise not to break your heart with worry. If I need care, I will submit. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re the one in trouble, I won’t get distracted. I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let you go to ruin. My table may be messy, but you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a different story. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other night, Raymond and I were sitting around in our \u00e2\u20ac\u0153living room,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which consists of our beloved plush brown sofa that we shipped from Pittsburgh to the West Coast, plus a few square feet of surrounding floor space. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve each got a folding tray table, supposedly for eating on, but instead we have piled … Continue reading In Which We Rebuild Civilization from the Comfort of Our Living Room<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=962"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":969,"href":"https:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962\/revisions\/969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurashefler.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}