the armchair

Back when we had a variety of furniture to sit on and plenty of things to do, nobody really paid much attention attention to what we were sitting on. Days might go by without sitting in an armchair and I can only recall ever finally sitting in one out of random availability more than conscious choice. I guess I just took it for granted that I could always sit in an armchair anytime I wanted and never really thought of sitting in one as a luxury of leisure. But eventually everything changed and we were forced to leave to where we find ourselves now, strangers in a foreign place not entirely welcomed other than to be welcomed as visitors, temporary people that others need not get to know or invest in because our status will never be quite the same as everyone else’s.  We’re fortunate that we were given a place to live and some places to go to occupy our time but we’re acutely self-aware that something is amiss and as a result we can’t quite fall into the invisible routines that so easily evaporate our time by some mystical passage that we never notice until it’s gone and we fall in beds to sleep the night away.  Then again, I’m not sure that was good or bad...but anyways. It’s different when you have to consciously spend each hour without those routines causing an abundance of time to pile up in a day and it’s best not to think of the weeks of incalculable time ahead that you would never know how to spend if you really did think about it knowing you’ll only be left with your memories of what was and what was includes your dreams of what could have been. Still, you end up thinking a lot about those things when you have so much time for nothing. When we arrived here all we had was an empty room and we slept on the floor, which made our nights restless adding to our empty hours. Eventually we found mattresses and they were quite a luxury after having slept on the floor for so many nights but surprisingly they faded into the background quickly and even became ordinary as our only pieces of furniture to sit on and do the things that we once had other furniture for such as tables and chairs and stools and benches and even armchairs. Eventually, someone brought home an arm chair they found somewhere and that never became ordinary rather it was amongst our most coveted of our very few possessions. It wasn't much in comparison to armchairs  from our past life and in all honesty it was kind of dirty but we easily overlooked such details because while beds are better than nothing to sit on, they lacked things I never realized were so important such as back support when you want to sit up. As it turned out, beds were most comfortable when you wanted to lay down on them but you don’t always want to lay down. I’m not sure where we got the armchair but there it was one day and we all commented regularly how lucky we were to have it even if it cramped the little space we had. But with only one arm chair and too little room for too many people, it became quite a sought after piece of furniture and we ended up quarreling over what was fair and who got to sit in it next or who got to sit in it longer. When you finally did get your chance you always wondered how long you had before someone else would complain until you gave up and got out. That’s why someone came up with the idea of the schedule. We could count on the schedule for a reserved time to have the armchair all to ourselves and that gave us some peace of mind while we sat in it and the peace of mind coupled with a slight luxury gave birth to a freedom of mind I had never felt before. And so it became that our prescribed times to sit in a chair, which had once been a punishment, were now looked forward to and served as moments of individual healing from the collective heartbreak we had suffered. I once would not have known how to spend my time in a chair but then I came to look forward to it and absorbed each minute I sat their relishing each thought I had in that chair. Somehow everything was different in that moment. It was as if being stripped of everything I once knew and then given this one moment to look forward to wound my mind up so tightly that once I eventually sat in the chair my mind let loose and things came out of I didn’t know were there.  Thoughts and energies and powers to create and even when I finally allowed myself, hope. I was able to wonder how I might ever resurrect any hope I had ever hoped for and for some reason in those moments in that chair I could do that when everywhere else I was just reminded of who I wasn’t anymore. In that chair I was able to imagine who I might become.