Everyday Canvas

Walls

Prompt: What items do you put on your walls? Posters, pictures? I am curious.

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From Robert Frost to Kavafy, poets have taken the idea of the walls in the negative sense of building inaccessible fences around oneself with a meaning of not being open to life and other people.

To me, walls are upward structures that hold a house together, and their secondary benefit is to serve as a showcase for whatever the inhabitants want to exhibit. In our house, almost all the walls have paintings, family pictures, and souvenirs on them. In my bedroom, besides the family photos, a cherished possession is a framed embroidery done by a dear old aunt, now deceased.

On the living and dining rooms’ walls are my younger son’s wedding photo, older son’s portrait in oil, the photos of my husband and I together, plus actual paintings in oils and several framed gifts of marbling (ebru) art given to me by a friend and great master of that art. In the hallway, I have framed miniatures and a photo of Hemingway’s cats at the door of his Key West House.

On the kitchen walls are family photos and funny stuff I print out from the web such as cartoons and those of Auntie Acid. The funny stuff keeps changing according to what I think will put a smile on my face.

In the other rooms, not much wall space is left due to bookshelves. On what little room remains, we have a few family photos.

In the family room where we also eat and work, my husband and I put our parents’, our children’s, and other family members’ photos, plus the photo of Freud’s Couch, which has to do with my husband's career.

Now, the real fun is in the corner at the back of the room where I put bookshelves and a small desk for my laptop. This is where I usually write. A half of the wall next to me is mine, and it is just as jam-packed as my brain. On it are the many photos of my family, current and extended, and especially those of my beloved cousins. I have two dream catchers, one of my sons’ third grade painting, lots of hand scribbled or printed adages and affirmations, one of which came from WdC, saying Life’s Better When You’re Writing. I also have three Shopping Lists on the end of the wall going toward the kitchen, one for food, the other for other things, and third as extra.

My hubby doesn’t object to the fact that my wall looks like a white-elephant sale because the alternative would be me working in the room designed to be my study when we first moved in this house, which would mean we wouldn’t be together all that much. As he, too, bought a laptop and made a corner for himself in our family room, instead of using the room that was designed to be his office.

As to my intangible wall, I decorate it with smiles and nods and hope that I am forgiven for what I hide behind it in shadows.