15 Feb 2024
Dream
I was sitting in my finished basement with a couple of friends we were gathered around a large wooden object that functioned as a table sort of. The wood was worn slightly from neglect. I was talking about how they don't make furniture solid like this anymore. "The stuff they make these days will break in a few years and have to be replaced. Things like this were built to last for generations. I used to have a dresser too. It was super heavy. I had to get rid of it. I still have mixed feelings about that. I like the brass fixtures on this, they're really nice". I played with a screw I saw sticking out on the bottom corner and it fell out. I pushed it back into its hole.
I stood up, we had been sitting on the floor. I noticed the face of it - which was pointed toward the wall and slightly obscured by the stools I had sitting around it on one that side (we would primarily sit on the other side so we could face the television mounted on the wall). I noticed that the wooden object had the face of an old radio. It was beautiful. Brass plates, knobs, dials. It should really be facing in toward the center of the room, I thought, where people had a better chance to see it - even with the stools around it. This was made back when a radio was a piece of furniture, not just a tiny box. Though I can't remember when I've last listened to a radio.
I began to consider the large piece of furniture, and the space it occupied in the room. There would be so much more space to live if I committed the sacrilege of getting rid of it. The kids could play freely in a space like this. But it's the past. It feels dishonorable to just discard it. I looked around and noted that while this space was much more organized than my current life, yet it was dominated by this old piece of furniture. Several plants which I was attempting to care for were unhealthy. I considered how being rid of the old radio would allow them to be cared for more appropriately.
