To-Do Note:
A New List
12 June 2019
¶ A curious, disturbing feeling. A letdown?
The place looks great. There is nothing to be done. That keen little whisper no longer assures me that if I simply move this here or clear out that there, I will hear the music of the spheres in my own living room. Everything has been moved and cleared, but I don’t hear any music unless I start it myself.
It seems that I have come to the end of a protracted list of domestic improvements, some of them longstanding grievances, and some spontaneous improvisations. I ought to feel as great as the place looks.
Then — what relief! — I take note of the pyramid. What we have always called the pyramid is an exotic chest of drawers, faced in “fossil stone,” that tapers at it climbs to the height of my shoulders, where it is sectioned before it can come to a point. (Pyramidal enough.) The drawers are of many different sizes. Some are as wide as the cabinet, while others, much smaller, are ranged in rows of two or three. What you are supposed to use the chest for is the kind of question that never comes up when faced with such an obvious piece of decarola. As a result, the drawers are full of every kind of thing.
All right, junk. The two large drawers near the bottom constitute my tool chest. I don’t know what’s in them anymore, but Ray Soleil seems to, which is all that matters. Near the top, a squarish drawer holds nothing but packs of cards — cards that haven’t been used, some of them, ever. Do you remember those metal rings, like miniature savarin molds, that were to be filled with potpourri scents and then balanced on light bulbs, the heat of which would fill the room with fragrance? I am sure that a quarter-century has passed since the last time I made use of one of these things, but at the top of the chest there’s a lifetime supply — of rings and scent both. We’ve always kept batteries in the chest, but they’re no longer in just one drawer, so we have to hunt, and then of course we run out. The nicest word for the state of the cabinet’s drawers is “neglected.”
And there are many other drawers in the apartment, too. A few of them have been straightened up recently, in connection with moving desks around. But it’s still anyone’s guess if you’re going to find a pair of scissors where you expect to find one.
Start a new list.