Consider the poor floor. I always liked floors you could look at for entertainment - the carpet in my place of employment looks as if late Pleistocene dinosaurs used it for birthing (you dumped your coke here in what, 1974? oh 75) . sorry if you cant unsee that . but hardwood floors .. sublime! Tile, elegant. Plank, soft popular painted as in my old victorian farmhouse, rutted with the feet of history. Creaking just slightly as good floors will sometimes. I enjoy floors. But the home planetarium floor - its an organic entity in itself.
I use carpet refugees from the house of course, and an amateur archeologist could discover layers from eras .. theres my sons carpet from grade school - down another layer or two, theres the lime green carpet in the dining room the day we first owned the house in 1985 and without a word, carried it out immediately. But my planetarium floor is more than just rug-ology - its a living breathing space. If it could talk ! It would complain about those drips ... since my planetarium has had several roofs, they've shifted around but they've always been there. My floor would request buckets to catch them like in that summer of 94 .. It would recall the snake that got under said carpets and was later seen slithering down a wall joist.. My planetarium floor would stick out its tongue at my carpentry and its gaps - somehow leaves get in, and they are NOT all tracked in .. they blow in .. from somewhere . I believe leaves are shape shifters .. they teleport themselves into everything I own. Look, there's TREES we said as we bought this country place. I've been picking up sticks and raking leaves ever since. The planetarium floor would complain on and on .... MAKE UP YOUR MIND which chairs you are using .... wait, whats this church PEW... this couch, wasn't that in the sunroom throughout the aughts?? Stop rearranging. Stop dragging stepladders over me! Stop changing dome materials, dropping paint, staples. Did you know you dropped a lense over here 3 years ago? You might want to put it back in the bag. If you only knew. Which of course, you don't. And on and on my planetarium floor would complain.
But that's not the whole story. It would beam in delight too. It would lovingly recall the footsteps of children, excited children, cautiously entering and then sitting on it. It would hear the gasps as the stars came out. It would watch my stars on the ceiling and wonder how many floors get to see stars anyway, floorhood being primarily an indoor profession. And it, I hope, would commune with the very ground it rested upon - recalling the years before the planetarium when I mowed its lush grass .. and the decades before that, when cows grazed upon it .. and back and back it would go sharing stories with the ground that supported it. Back into forests and times that can live only in our imaginations.
Imagination. That's what really my planetarium floor supports. Thats where my stars came from. We're both literally 'grounded' in both reality and imagination. The next time I walk across that floor I'll try to remember all this. As I shift a bucket, looking for that next leak.
I use carpet refugees from the house of course, and an amateur archeologist could discover layers from eras .. theres my sons carpet from grade school - down another layer or two, theres the lime green carpet in the dining room the day we first owned the house in 1985 and without a word, carried it out immediately. But my planetarium floor is more than just rug-ology - its a living breathing space. If it could talk ! It would complain about those drips ... since my planetarium has had several roofs, they've shifted around but they've always been there. My floor would request buckets to catch them like in that summer of 94 .. It would recall the snake that got under said carpets and was later seen slithering down a wall joist.. My planetarium floor would stick out its tongue at my carpentry and its gaps - somehow leaves get in, and they are NOT all tracked in .. they blow in .. from somewhere . I believe leaves are shape shifters .. they teleport themselves into everything I own. Look, there's TREES we said as we bought this country place. I've been picking up sticks and raking leaves ever since. The planetarium floor would complain on and on .... MAKE UP YOUR MIND which chairs you are using .... wait, whats this church PEW... this couch, wasn't that in the sunroom throughout the aughts?? Stop rearranging. Stop dragging stepladders over me! Stop changing dome materials, dropping paint, staples. Did you know you dropped a lense over here 3 years ago? You might want to put it back in the bag. If you only knew. Which of course, you don't. And on and on my planetarium floor would complain.
But that's not the whole story. It would beam in delight too. It would lovingly recall the footsteps of children, excited children, cautiously entering and then sitting on it. It would hear the gasps as the stars came out. It would watch my stars on the ceiling and wonder how many floors get to see stars anyway, floorhood being primarily an indoor profession. And it, I hope, would commune with the very ground it rested upon - recalling the years before the planetarium when I mowed its lush grass .. and the decades before that, when cows grazed upon it .. and back and back it would go sharing stories with the ground that supported it. Back into forests and times that can live only in our imaginations.
Imagination. That's what really my planetarium floor supports. Thats where my stars came from. We're both literally 'grounded' in both reality and imagination. The next time I walk across that floor I'll try to remember all this. As I shift a bucket, looking for that next leak.
