Today there are no serious latecomers, and all of us are served breakfast, while in the corner, the two young women whisper, their mouths opening and closing greedily, hushed words falling from them or morsels of food, as they keep their heads close together, intent on spilling and absorbing great secrets, which interest no others, except a tall balding man, who sat at my table and who had recently shown up. He seemed to be sensitive, at least to the propinquity of the demanding man who flailed his arms, because the relative newcomer inched farther from him, even going so far as to move his plate down the table, toward mine. He may have sensed the other man's pain or felt his own, or have felt no pain at all. People can feel a lot of pain and not be sensitive, in the way the word is used, which doesn't include the experience of animals. Many people have sensitive skin and skin problems, and people who are very kind to animals can be entirely insensitive, concerned mostly with their own pain, not others' pain. Some might think I was insensitive because I didn't want to talk with the two women, who listen to music, play chess, read with conviction, are vegetarians, and who never impose themselves upon me, but seem to he preparing to tell me about their lives, which is what people want to do. One of the two has a history of psoriasis, and today it has flared on the backs of her thin hands, and, if her elbows were bare, the inflamed, encrusted flesh, angry and purple, might be visible, too. She is wan, skinny, and never exhibits anger, but always seems malleable, or breakable, too fragile, like a good wineglass, and holds her tidy body erect, drawing her head up, to peer deftly at the world. But she stares, sometimes vacantly, though this is not necessarily anger, and I have caught her watching me, but then she shifts her eyes downward or smiles sweetly. She especially stares at the tall balding man.
She was one of the first people I came upon, noting her presence, slight as it was, but I didn't really take her in when I arrived, though what was indistinct then has gained in definition with time. Now I remember her in the big room-which is as familiar to me as my family's living room that I rarely went into because of its formality, along with the fear that I might damage it-and, because I've seen her every day after, I can claim to remember what she looked like then, though I didn't really see her, similar to how a line-up works, inadequately. If I were to have noticed people in a line-up before, anywhere, but not in the act of committing the crime of which they are accused, rightly or wrongly, those people could appear to be the perpetrators when they were only people seen before in a different context. Everything here seems familiar today that was, not long ago, uncannily strange and even foreboding, because it was a new place, and everyone who resides with me, in this place, is no longer a complete stranger but an incomplete one. Stranger crime is unusual. Leslie Van Houten assisted in the murder of a stranger, which is unusual, since people usually murder people they know, and at the time, 1969, it was still more unusual that a woman helped to murder another woman, though Mrs. Rosemary LaBianca was already dead by Tex Watson's hands when Leslie Van Houten stabbed her in the lower back nineteen times. It was never in doubt that she participated in the crime, and she never was in a line-up, but what was in doubt, and still is, is why she did it and what exactly she did do, if she committed a murder or had been only a violent follower or merely a fiend, who stuck the knife in, many times, after Mrs. LaBianca was (lead.
When I was escorted into the big house, into its spacious, dark wood lounge, or main room, I was immediately conscious of an anxious wanting, after I inadvertently noticed the two young women, lounging on couches opposite each other, to whom I was introduced, but whose names I quickly forgot, and a few men, whose names I also forgot, while being handed the keys to my rooms. I adamantly wanted a comfortable chair, an appropriate table, and a good light to read by, I read a lot, I can happily read all day and night, when I should be doing other things, but most important, I explained to those in charge, who stood by impassively while I orated my demands, ones they were familiar with, I needed a good chair, it concerned me most. In a way, it alone concerned me. Nothing mattered but a chair, to whose acquisition I gave all my attention and energy, speaking of its necessity with an urgent eloquence that surprised me and those in temporary charge of my comfort and well-being, which was another reason I scarcely noticed the other residents.
I take exception to ugly, badly made or poorly designed chairs, uncomfortable chairs, and I have an interest in well-made, well-designed chairs, marveling at their efficiency and beauty, though when I was a child, I didn't. In the family den of the comfortable house I loved that was sold over my protests, there was an Eames table and chairs, around and on which we sometimes ate, though I was unaware of the kind of furniture it was or what it meant, or that its possession meant anything, but I liked the set, blond and modern, even though some of the chairs' backs loosened and fell off later, the black rubber splitting from the blond wood, and, when the house was sold, the set was, also. I often think of those chairs and that table, but especially the chairs, since anything can be significant later in the present or future that wasn't in the past. The chairs were different from the sober brown velvet club chairs and pale gold brocade couch in the living room, where I rarely went, though it was comfortable, but the couch needed to be plumped, and if I sat down, especially to hear the sighs of the stuffed cushions collapsing under my young body, I would have to plump them up again. The other chairs and couches in the den were made of wood, like the Eames chairs, covered in hard foam rubber that didn't show traces of bodies pressed upon them, not nine, fundamentally, and that furniture appealed more, since it was durable and as remote and invulnerable to my childish roughhousing as the Swedes who designed it, who lived far away from the place and people into which I was born and about which I had no choice.
More time goes into designing chairs than any other kind of furniture, a chair is more like a car than a bed, and many read sitting on chairs whose shape most closely resembles a human body, its base or bottom is especially for the bottom or buttocks and its hack the spine, imitating the human back, but people also like to read on beds, the way I do. The Eameses, Charles and Ray, designed the chairs in our den in the early 1940s when they, like my father and his brother, either sought new materials or new ways to use material, in the case of the Eameses, molded plywood, but in the case of my father and uncle, who couldn't use natural fibers, as cotton was needed for war, they experimented with modern techniques to innovate synthetic fibers. Invention flourishes in war, for the war effort, and there's always change and reversals of fortune, progress in industry, and even society, which requires more progress to correct, since wars have consequences about which few have a choice, almost no one, and fewer make decisions. But design is chiefly about choice, design is satisfying. Few people want to fight, and fewer want to make designs, but some wars and designs are universally reputed to be better than others, though opinions shift, since what is most definite about the contemporary is that it is primarily temporary.
The history of chairs records human sensitivity, or consciousness, since chairs, over time, have become ever more closely molded to the body, to fit its growing dominance, though it was long after the Enlightenment, especially after the 19th century, that chairs were really designed for comfort and style. Long ago, chairs, while made for people, had rigid backs, their seats were unpadded, and people adjusted to the chair, its design and exigencies, or people didn't expect to be comfortable or comfort was once different, and always relative, or maybe people didn't sit long, since many worked in the fields, ate miserable dinners in squalid huts or hovels, though kings and queens probably were seated for hours on hard, ornate chairs, wearing clothes, which today might be called costumes, that were heavy and also uncomfortable. For a long time people mustn't have complained too much about stiff clothes or rigid backed chairs, since it wasn't until 1297 that chairs were even mentioned in a poem, "up I chaere he sate adoun, al vp be see sonde," and at that time the word "chair" changed from a three syllable pronunciation to two, and then finally there was, in English, the one syllable word.