The crux of our middle-
class lives folds into every day
items, puzzle blocks we buy when
some of the pieces are missing. So much
depends on the picture of necessity,
desire and the pieces
we accumulate: cars, furniture, appliances,
collections of what we need
and what we want, fitted into
wooden frames and bricks, mortared
into homes we own. How lovely
those drapes are and that landscape
hanging on the wall. The precise
measurements of how we live
depends upon what’s missing
from the painting. Cars, furniture,
appliances, the stuff of what
we pay for, counting our gains,
our losses, wanting
to balance the ledger
of who we are and what
we believe we deserve.
© Ami Mattison
what we believe we deserve...there it is...and once we get we find yet another thing missing from the picture and so we cycle and cycle until one day...perhaps as we are dying we realise, none of that matters one bit...
ReplyDelete"..so much depends on the picture of necessity.." a great examination of our runaway egos, and how the strangest things matter, or conversely, don't. Some painstaking and effective enjambment here, also.
ReplyDeleteGreat take on the contrast of need and want, and by implication where we find, or don't, the meaning of our lives.
ReplyDeleteThe precise
ReplyDeletemeasurements of how we live
depends upon what’s missing
from the painting.
I like the idea that we fill up our lives with junk and hang pictures that show what we really want is an open junk-free space. I'm reading E.B White's essays right now, and he has a good one about all of the crap we collect.