We bought the 55-inch plasma television 5 years ago as a birthday present to the house. It's a large, black television, holstered on steel girders attached to the wall. It has permanent screen-in burn reduction of several rectangles near the bottom of the screen. After a night of unadulterated video game action, the black square radiates intense heat that could make a winter night as blazingly tepid as the summer solstice.
The Bookshelf
My parents always had difficulty understanding what kind of furniture to get. They tried to impress visitors with really extravagant-looking pieces such as the defunct bookshelf. It sprouts from the desk like Botticelli’s shell, a gleaming white curtain with multiple layers. When it was filled with books, it was the most impressive-looking thing in the living room. Today, it's completely bare. Every scratch and dent is visible and its extravagance fades with age.
The Couch
My aunt had a white couch. After a few seconds of taste, she realized the couch wasn't suitable for her so she dumped it onto us. When the couch finally came to our doorstep, my brother and I rushed towards it and jumped and bounced on it. Today, it's my father's second bed and the dog's home away from home. It's been permanently stained with artificial juices and many spilled water bottles. But for the many vacations spent at home, it was the only place where we felt comfortable. After all, the couch let our asses flatten out onto the cushions and really, what more could we ask for?
The Dog Bed
We bought it for my dog Sonic after my mom suggested he should have a designated place to sleep. It's a leopard-spotted bed only about two feet long, two feet wide. It has a leopard paw on one side, and an opened slit on the other side. Before we left the house, my mom would remember to wash the bed every week; my dad was very busy with his job and left the bed sticky and filled with many uneaten bones. It always upset me since I constantly told him that Sonic shouldn't eat bones. More so than the rest of the dilapidated living room covered with dust and beer cans, I always felt really sorry that my dog would allow himself to sleep in such filth. I finally decided to wash his bed and remove all of the bones, only to find those bones in the exact same place the following week.
The Picture
On the desk where once there was all of my useless papers/drawings, now there are only 4 pictures of my brother and I and many unopened envelopes. One of the pictures is the most hastily made picture frame anyone could ever dare to give to another person. Both of us awkwardly fill up the picture frame and both of our heads just barely touch the corners. We both hold our most triumphant objects, my high school diploma and my brother's championship trophy while wearing our most casual outfits: designer t-shirts and shorts. The picture frame is two shades of blue, divided by dotted lines that crisscross across the frame at a casual speed. The pathetic image of the two boys swallowing their self-indulgence was hastily printed out minutes after remembering we forgot to get our father a gift. Dad doesn't know that. What he knows is that his sons were considerate enough to get him a present. It probably won't last very long, but for him, it'll last a lifetime.
Last summer, I took an online creative writing course for UCLA. One of the assignments was to select 5 objects from our home and write a short description about them. It had been a year since my parents' separation and I was living in a cramped room with my mother and brother. For inspiration, I visited my father’s house. It was the first time I felt comfortable enough to visit by myself. When I took a brief glance at the living room as it was, I knew I had the objects for my assignment. Good reception from my online classmates and professor was enough motivation to expand the assignment into a full-length prose poem. To prepare, I took many pictures of the house and set aside an entire week to push out the poem. I started working on it at my friend’s house but I could only squeeze out little blips of phrases. It became more painful to divulge further into the disgraceful state of my father’s house. Despite what I’m describing, the poem wasn’t like an autopsy report. Instead, it was like recalling only the pleasant memories during a funeral for a loved one but never overlooking the lingering disease that always existed. What you’ve just read are the remnants of the poem, as I left it a year ago. Someone once told me how difficult writing is because of how personal it becomes. Never was this more true than with this assignment.
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| The family dogs, Shadow (left) and Sonic (right) |
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