Story Tellin'

Things.

It may have started with the doll house. A handcrafted three bedroom, two story home built by her father and wallpapered in silvery damask papers by her mother. She perused the toy shelf and precious objects aisle at second hand stores (frequented on Tuesdays by her mother when everything was 50% off). Occasionally she scored a small table with three chairs for ten cents or a miniature porcelain Irish Setter for twenty five cents that she later placed in front of the door to guard the home. The doll house was never about the dolls. In fact, not a single doll was ever purchased. Instead it was about the placement of two love seats settled on a colored piece of paper she considered a rug. Or the way the mood of the whole house changed when she cut out an ominous illustrated profile of a man in a top hat from a used edition of Great Expectations to hang above the chase lounge. 

She did not outgrow her attention to detail for the objects in one's home by the age of sixteen. Or  even twenty five. She re-arranged every furniture piece in her apartment often. One day she angled every chair and couch so that it was angled at the front door (a  rather startling and haunting anticipatory arrangement for those unassuming guests walking in through that door). In the brutal North Dakota winters she huddled cushy furniture items draped in thick blankets close together. In the spring she orchestrated sitting areas so that they maximized the lilac scented spring breeze moving through her open windows. On days that she did not feel strong enough to move solid wood framed pieces, she instead pulled everything out of their drawers and lined the objects out neatly to assess, photograph, and then reconfigure their resting places. She did not hoard. This was not about collecting stuff. 

This ritual- or hobby?- may not have been so strange had she confined it to her own home. But she also did these things at parties of people she knew. And parties of people she did not know. She smuggled in sullen eyed portraits on par with what was found in Dorian Gray's attic and used it to replace the home owner's garden landscape watercolor that hung across from the toilet. She once was able to replace an entire beige area rug with a faux bearskin rug without a single soul noticing that such an event had happened until someone tripped over the bear's head. Sometimes the changes were more subtle like replacing a simple plastic comb with an ivory handled brush. Or changing out the vanilla scented candles with gingerbread smelling candles. The items she replaced were occasionally stolen but usually were later found in the home of a another friend at another party. And it wasn't because she was a thief (although technically she was). It was because she loved the capacity to alter the entire atmosphere of a space with the addition or subtraction of a single object. 

* Inspired by "When Chinese Families Reveal Everything"