The TV is up on the wall, the blinds are up over the windows, and the rug is down. One wall of the living room is sorted- we have framed 3 black and white cityscapes, and popped them on the wall in a row. It’s the other wall that is giving us trouble. We’ve put a clock up- a long, rectangle clock that tells the time in London, Paris, New York and Tokyo. We hope to encourage people to believe we are frightfully cosmopolitan.
Beneath the clock is a gaping space.
The other two seem far less bothered about this than I am. Yesterday, I spent several hours looking at prints and posters we could buy to fill the space. This led me into a frenzy of panic and indecision about what type of person I was. Would I like a famous print? Or would that show that I had no original thoughts? What about a sports photo? Or would that throw my own meagre sporting accomplishments into stark relief? I wavered for a long time over a set of inspirational quotes, before realising that my housemates would never allow it. ‘I could get something saucy!’ I thought to myself, and began searching through photos of scantily clad women.
It took me a few minutes to realise that I did not particularly want a photo of a scantily clad woman on my living room wall. (Though this realisation came too late to save me from a lifetime of Amazon ‘if you liked this, you might like this’ recommendations, focussed almost entirely on girl-on-girl porn).
This distracted me a little, so I have failed to buy anything to put on the wall. (Though my DVD collection today is really far more ‘worldly’ than it was yesterday). The white expanse of wall still sits there, calmly mocking me, while I work out who it is I am. A moment ago, I put a photo of my face up there- which, looking at it now, might be the answer.
I’m excited to see the effect ‘make my face very large and put on a print’ has on my Amazon recommendations.
unfashionablylost 