13 November 1997 (1)

I'm sitting here in my tiny bedroom off the kitchen in my antique chair that I trash-picked off the streetcorner of Prescott and Princeton a couple blocks away (I was returning from a minutes-before-midnight CD purchase of the Brahms Trios). Here in Boston, residents don't need to hang on to their junk until they can get 'hold of a truck to load up and take everything to the dumps: just put everything out on the sidewalk and the trashmen will pick it up and haul it off. As people put out their unwanted items the night before collection, scavenging in the middle of the night can result in some nice finds.

After weaving myself up and down and across the streets of my neighborhood, on the corner of Prescott and Princeton I found a beautiful old chair. Just sitting there alone in the cold in the dark, I fell in love with it on first sight. Solid hardwood frame, stained dark, carved ornamentation along the top edge, woven cane enclosing the sides from below the arms to the seat, the seat and back upholstered in a fabric whose once-satiny sheen is now as muted as its green color.

It was about 2:00am when I fought to carry this wide chair through the narrow front door with only with a few bangs into walls that, I asked the next day, did wake up some people in the building.

So now here I sit in the chair, in my bedroom off the kitchen, ready to write some letters and do some writing.