Observations on Living
“It makes me think — have you ever just lived with a thing — constantly adjusting your behavior to it?”
Click. Squeak. Snap.
AHHHHHHH Damn It.
This is a familiar sequence of events in my house. See, we have this door, a hinged screen door — and it’s not friendly. Sure, it has some really good qualities, but the more I’ve been thinking about it, the more I’m convinced this screen door is hemming me in.
Here’s what happens: Once you’ve wrestled the hideous lever downward, then pushed the door open and swiveled your body around so that your ass is doing much of the work — once that’s all done — the challenge is to jump out of the way fast enough so you don’t get bitten by the thing on its ricochet joyride back to the door frame.
Why can’t I just seamlessly go in and out of this house? Why am I allowing this thing to block the free gentle flow of air, my ability to live both inside and outside without fear of contracting tetanus through a bloody wound? This door is holding me back from living my best life.
It makes me think. Have you ever just lived with a thing — constantly adjusting your behavior to it? Without even thinking, it just sneaks up on you … and the next thing you know you are captive to this inanimate object — and a poorly functioning one at that. Then one day you snap — “Fuck this thing!” you say. You are suddenly armed with an outrageous realization that “There’s got to be a better way!”
You know what? There is.
Turns out, this is a uniquely American condition. Invented after the Civil War, these hinged screen doors became fixtures of the American South and spread to be a cultural mainstay. So as with most things these days, let us look elsewhere for some reasonable solutions, shall we?
A trip across the pond is always enlightening. The European way of life, from my naive American vantage point, seems effortless and sophisticated, quaint but chic … Let me put it plainly — it just seems better.
But I digress. Let me tell you about one place, a special place for me.
In the Lazio region of central Italy, the people of a small hilltop town have been solving the problem of keeping the bugs out and letting the breeze in for years.
The solution is a curtain of sorts, and almost all of the stores in town have them in some form. Flowing strands hang from the top of the door frame, they undulate in the breeze, cats can easily prance between them, and customers reverently bow their heads as they walk through them. Each doorway, just for a moment, is a sensory playground — titillating to touch, a joy to look at, and a soft tinkling for the ears.
The butcher has one made out of flat perforated plastic pieces that have been fastened together in links to form multicolored chains. The local bar has a plastic garland version that is smaller than the circumference of the Christmas kind, but celebratory nonetheless. The school supply store has one that looks like plastic pieces of translucent spaghetti with sparkles embedded to catch the light — this particular model’s superpower.
A quick Google search leads me to available versions of the “fly curtain” as we call it here in America. There are wooden beads dyed into trendy hues and arranged into a pattern creating a rainbow, a landscape or the phases of the moon. I like rainbows — yeah, that’s the one.
Cool.
Or rather not cool at all, but this purchase isn’t about the design — it’s about not being hemmed in. It’s about traveling abroad in my senses if only for the moment it takes to walk through the curtain.
+++
Still Processing is a collection of work from the participants of the two-week 2021 Design Writing & Research Summer Intensive at the School of Visual Arts. For more information about our Summer Intensive as well as our two-semester Master’s program, please visit our website or email us at designresearch@sva.edu
