maybe it's not all bad

After a long, long day, C. and I are sitting at home, splitting a bottle of Chianti, listening to music, with the doors wide open to the summer night. It is sublime.

The earlier part of the day was not as relaxing. Today we drove to school, moved boxes into my little apartment, drove to Ikea, bought a desk and bookshelves, drove back, dropped those purchases off at the apartment, drove to my parents' home, picked up an extra futon they have, drove it back to the apartment, and then finally, finally, we drove home.

I needed the Chianti, or perhaps Bob Holroyd. I found the entire day overwhelming.

For one thing, I'd never been to Ikea before. It was thought-provoking and at the same time utterly numbing. As we went through row after row of cheap furniture, produced in either China or Thailand, with woods of questionable origin, I could not help but wonder about the human suffering and environmental degradation that I was buying along with my $49 bookshelves.

Yet, at the same time, C. and I both noticed the ten to twenty unique languages we heard spoken by our fellow pilgrims to the altar of cheap wooden goods. We heard various Eastern European languages, Russian, Spanish, a few different Indian dialects (well, we guessed they were different), Arabic, and even some sort of African language. I saw a car with a Namibia bumper sticker and one with a Colombian flag license plate frame. We saw women in saris, women in hajib, men in turbans, and then plenty of people of all different ethic backgrounds in blue jeans and t-shirts. Here were native-born Americans and immigrants from all over the world, more or less co-existing in harmony, all focused on the allure of Ikea pressboard.

I thought it was all rather remarkable.