Descriptive prose

Image result for television stands furniture

The cozy home sat at odds to the primary compass points. The front of the building faced northeast, so its corners (and the corners of each of the rooms) faced off to the various proper compass points.

There stood a large television stand in the eastern corner with an even larger (though thin) television stretching out of the edges of both sides of it. One of those "big screen" teevees that really ought to be hanging on a wall but isn't.

Two chairs to the right of the television, framing an electric fireplace with a mantle of seasonal decorations. To the right of THAT, on the northern corner, a very plush older Easy Chair with a wooden level on the side to lean it back or stand it up again.

What should be the wall on the northwestern side of the room is mostly a doorway to the dining room. The contents of THAT we leave out of account for now. To the right of the wide door, an abstract painting. To the left, the thermostat (actually two thermostats, of different vintages -- the new one works its magic while the older one sits by mute in case ever called on again).

Most of the southwestern side of the room hosts the back of a sofa, and then a chaise lounge. The two of them create an "L" effect, with the chaise reaching into the interior of the room. In the crook of the L sits a coffee table. Too large for its spot, round, and glass.

The southeastern wall features a furnace below and a large window above. This is also the place where the dog eats and drinks, when the noises from the furnace don't constrain such wholesome activities.

Comments

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

The Lyrics of "Live Like You Were Dying"

Back in 2004 Tim McGraw recorded the song "Live Like You were Dying." As a way of marking the one-decade anniversary of this song, I'd like to admit that a couple of the lines have confused me for years. I could use your help understanding them. In the first couple of verses, the song seems easy to follow. Two men are talking, and one tells the other about his diagnosis. The doctors have (recently? or a long time ago and mistakenly? that isn't clear) given him the news that he would die soon. "I spent most of the next days/Looking at the X-rays." Then we get a couple of lines about a man crossing items off of his bucket list. "I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing, I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu." Then the speaker -- presumably still the old man -- shifts to the more characterological consequences of the news. As he was doing those things, he found he was loving deeper and speaking sweeter, and givin...

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable a...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog