Several years ago, one of my friends returned from Thailand and brought me a keychain. I call this keychain “Green Elephant Dude”.
Green Elephant Dude used to sit under one of my monitors at my last job. On especially crappy days, I’d look down and see the bright colors and patterns in the sunlight. I’d crane my neck back over my chair, stare at the ceiling. “Why…am I here?” I’d groan from my white collar shackles.
Green Elephant Dude didn’t have any answers. He was just chillin’.
I found a steal of a deal on a television stand last week, something to finally replace my family’s mid-90s television cart. $30 from a garage sale. I also bought a dark and faded antique-style teal cabinet that fits the front room. It works perfectly against the wall when placed under the right-most vintage travel poster. In the name of symmetry, I’ve decided to purchase another to even out the other side. I settled upon a 1930s poster of the pyramids at Giza, with tall palm trees in the foreground. I acquired a frame that perfectly matches my existing ones, and now I can only wait for the poster to arrive in the mail.
Renting your own apartment is expensive. When I was doing that, I always had my eye out for good decorations. This wasn’t all bad, but make no mistake, it gets expensive. The bathroom was set to be colonial Africa, the kitchen rustic France, the patio India, and the front room a combination of Islamic patterns, vintage travel, and general jungle. The bookshelf was ancient Mesopotamia. I dreamed of finding old colonial post cards and stacking them in a desk organizer. I did not accomplish all that I intended.
Finding these decorations can be hard. At one point I had some framed Chinese characters I found at a Goodwill, but I eventually got rid of them because they just didn’t match the other decorations and were cheaply made. Other items worked perfectly: a very old lithograph of rhinoceroses from what must have been an encyclopedia. I framed it in a dark black frame with a cream, fibrous backing. My sister got me a replica Sumerian tablet. I found wall decoration plates of a gold and green rust color with middle eastern patterns. I was very proud of what I had going, and many people commented that things looked very nice (at least compared to most men’s decorations).
Aesthetic is interesting. What are we trying to believe about our lives by the things we surround ourselves with?
I remember being curled up on my leather couch, dim light on, reading a book on the British Empire. Wolseley. That’s the only name I remember. Boer wars. A lot of evil things happened, of course. I think there’s just this fascination with the world before it became so…tamed. Of course, there’s just as much to discover as there always was. We just think we see it more, hear about it more.
There is an Indian-style bookshelf I’ve been craving lately. It’s incredibly ornate. Hand-painted. You don’t find furniture like this. But it’s rather expensive, and slightly flimsy-looking. I crave color for my drab room, the only room that ever failed to have a real theme. I tried to go mountain theme with my room, but it only ever came down to an amazing framed reproduction of a large lake and tall, tall mountains. My dad bought me that for Christmas in 8th grade. It is one of the few things that survives from that era.
We keep moving on and we keep studying the past. I keep my eyes open for decorations. Something inside of me still yearns for atmosphere, tracing the moods of my own soul through its jungles and ruins and stone works, through sculpted gold, and sparkled greens, reds, and blues, and etchings in the sand.