The bedroom furniture

I am sure that lots of people alive in the universe have bought, buy, and will buy bedroom furniture without involving any of the following: guilt, self-doubt, teeth-gnashing, hand-wringing, poling questions, eastern philosophy, sarcasm, or David Foster Wallace. Since Holly sent me the link to the Pottery Barn Hudson Bed Set, I have employed all in a somewhat surprising and unscheduled octagon match inside my head. Who is fighting? In one corner stands a punk minimalist who is Hermoine-Granger-anxious to point out that people, some of which have faces familiar to me, don't always have something to eat for dinner or a place to live or the support to do anything more than sleep it off and hope it will not be so bad tomorrow, and wouldn't allocating some resources towards, you know, that*, be far better. In the other corner is a guy who has not forgotten that there is a certain utility in buying things and who is ready to tell the story about the time when his brother bought a pair of ski-boots and was a markedly happier person for three weeks following.** This same guy would also like to point out that the utility of something that makes a wife happy must be very high and certainly higher than money spent on, say, the Complete Works of Alexander Pope, chicken teriyaki, or even, booze***.

DFW comes into play in the WWDFWD context. He would remind me that there are only so many things to think about in a day and that I already allot way too much time to cursing my fantasy hockey line up. DFW has also just generally become my Howard Roark of the moment, being uncompromising in all the ways that I would like to be uncompromising - which, is not at all inconsistent with his (DFW's, not Roak's) suicide, because, it seems reasonable to assume that suicide, in addition to being all of the hateful and hurtful things that it is, is also certainly uncompromising. . . .which is of course a good thing to remember, but w/r/t bedroom furniture leaves me, where?

Well, perhaps it leaves me where I should be: perched upon the thin wooden rod of compromise****. Say this sentence with me: It is ok that you have lived 32 years without a headboard and now are suddenly in need of one. This is something that happens all the time. Embrace the change and stop framing the decision as a fight. It is a joyous decorative journey.

Sound convincing? No. Well, I am still working on it. Compromise does not happen overnight.


* that being, of course, homelessness, hunger, disease of all kinds, and generally the lagging enterprise of peace on earth and goodwill towards men and women, which, incidentally, I (once?) thought we were all supposed to be working on.

** Continuity comments - ok, first, this is the worst fight ever. Two guys who have stories to tell - one of whom is compared to a female character in a juvenile fiction series - really cutting edge MMA stuff. And second, if the fight is in the octagon aren't there eight corners and not just two? The train has finally sailed on mixing boxing metaphors with those of all other fighting styles.

***The booze argument is a bit suspect as the utility of something that intoxicates runs deep in almost every culture. I have not seen such a similar cultural phenomenon around bedroom furniture. On the other hand, and in this corespondent's defense, in the context of "the utility of making a wife happy" booze has not won many prizes (and what prizes it has won have been revoked the following morning).

****If the thin wooden rod of compromise was part of the Hudson collection at Pottery Barn it would cost $500.