4. My couch! My beautiful little couch!

It’s here! My coworkers just delivered my loveseat with the store truck. I love it!

 

It fits perfectly, and it's just what I wanted: sort of a 1970's old-person-watching-TV (almost ugly?) couch vibe. Which I don't know why that's desirable? Because it's the comfy side of the Space Age?

It’s something my working-class Italian relatives would’ve had – – the ones my father went away from, choosing instead my mother with her Victorian aesthetics. She did have great taste, but it was narrow. This couch would not have made the cut. I don’t discard her good taste, I add to it.

[From heaven she says, Now I like that style too.

Hm. Was that really her? It sounded like Penny Cooper...]

It is in like-new shape, though its label says it was made in 2008 (by the now-closed Southwood Reproductions in North Carolina).
But you could've watched Star Trek or the Watergate hearings from a couch like this.

(You can see, I haven't put the room back together again.)
I seem to have been collecting things that match it,
including the pinky Oriental carpet that clashes in harmony...

The blue ottoman went with the boxy, big blue armchair I put out on the curb this weekend. It was always too deep for me.

My altered matador w/ duckling on the wall goes great with it too--the weird brown-yellow of the suit of lights...

I think I've talked about this painting before?
It's one of my favorite things--I added stuff to a velvet painting donated to the thrift store.
(I could stop writing " donated to the thrift store"--it goes without saying that's the norm.)
A bleeding bull used to charge in the background, but I replaced him with mountains I cut out of a damaged velvet.

 

I had no intentions when I first made this, and no one needs to see it this way, but over the years it's  totally become "The Road to Emmaus" to me.

You know the story?
After Jesus is crucified, a couple guys [represented by one matador] are walking home from Jerusalem, where they'd been to celebrate Passover. (And here in 2025, it's Passover week right now).

A stranger comes up and starts talking to them. That's the duckling---can you see? It's soooo chatty!

Eventually they realize--it's that guy!  The "Immortal Essence pervading everywhere"--the one they said was the Messiah.
He really was!

They are amazed...
"... and he disappeared from their sight. 
They asked each other,
'Were not our hearts burning within us
while he talked with us on the road....?'"

--Luke 23: 13-35

My goodness, whatever I do, I keep returning to burning hearts and the like today.
But now I'm going to read on MY COUCH!!! Something secular.