Finding meaning in an empty space
Stories submitted to Bernhardt Werner from DRA of Alexandria Virginia
DRA of Alexandria Virginia has been following our site and often comments on postings. He sent us the very short pieces of fiction each focused on an empty chair. In his cover note to us he said “It has been my experience that what we learn about mind-brain science should not be the exclusive property of neuroscience types. I have learned more about variations in how minds work from Shakespeare and Dostoevsky they I have from reading Psychology Today or the Journal of Experimental Psychology. In the 5 empty chairs below I simply illustrate what we all know (but no less interesting) that context defines the meaning of an object in perception. That context can help frame the object in focus but often the framing comes from our thoughts and knowledge and past experience that biases how we see things and interpret them.” Hope you are not bored by the simplicity of the 3 chairs in minuet story form.
Foreboding
The women can choose to sit in any of the bright colored large plastic armchairs. Week after week we generally sit in the same seat. I know bits and pieces about who the other women are, a few by name, where they will go when they leave here, news about kids, husbands, their weekly scheduled clinic visits. I am not alone in noticing changes, in the weight, or posture, facial expressions, coloring of the other women. We never get together on the ‘outside’.
It has been some weeks since the tall slim woman with her young daughter by her side sat in the big red chair near the labs. She is much younger than the rest of us. Last week, I put down my magazine and asked the woman sitting next to me had she recently seen her or the little girl and she hadn’t. I continue to sit, making small talk, reading, watching a daytime soap waiting for the IV bag to empty, marking the end of this week’s chemo treatment. Maybe the woman with her daughter will be back next week. I hope so.
Loneliness
Most Saturday mornings, about 9, his landlady and her 2 young daughters, Roz and Eve, leave the house together. Sometimes, when the student boarder hears the door close, he leaves his room, wanders down stairs, and moves about their house. The footsteps recede along the walkway and he slips into Roz’s room, sniffs at the scent left in the air, Giorgio, maybe. He stops for a moment and this time doesn’t open up her draws but instead strokes her bra and hose hanging over the bedroom chair. He never told Roz that she is his favorite.
He moves to the kitchen and stands right behind one of the four wooden chairs framing the white enamel table and can imagine them together, mother daughters sitting together at breakfast, sharing stories, giggling, relaxed. They have often invited him to join them. He thanked them but declined to sit in the fourth chair.
Isolation
Mr. Barth had left his morning newspaper on the table next to the resting dark gray whicker rocking chair. Each morning, after breakfast, he shuffles towards ‘his’ chair. It stands alone next to an old floor lamp in the corner furthest away from double doors that lead into the Albany Assisted Living’s huge dining room. Tonight, after dinner, just after 6, residents slowly file out, in gaggles, chatting, some pushing walkers, heading for the lounge, the game room, or outside into the garden. Just like last evening, Mr. Barth heads for the whicker rocker, with a book under his arm. This week it is the latest Oprah recommendation. Around 9 pm he will get up and slowly walk towards his room, looking down at his feet as he goes, stopping occasionally to catch his breath.
Envy
There are lookers and there are shoppers. We were lookers, always, looking around, and the slim tall woman with the Gucci bag, and matching pumps was ready to buy, now, not later or tomorrow, or never. Willie and I are never ready to buy the big stuff. The Gucci woman stopped in front of a vintage Eames chair. Even I recognized what it was and that the red chair covering was original. She stroked the sweeping broad armrests that flowed across and then down, just barely hiding the flow of the steel legs. I guess we were staring. She then ran her hand over the back of the chair and then without even looking at the price tag, announced to a passing salesman, “Yes, I’ll take it.”
Arrogance
Sometimes the rules aren’t clear. He hurried but was a few minutes late when he opened the door to the ninth floor conference room. He recognized only two of the participants at the meeting that had already started. There were only 3 chairs empty around the huge wooden oval table when he arrived and he headed towards one of them. He tip toed, shoulders, head down, and saw the agenda sheet on the seat, picked it up and pulled the chair out from the table, then stopped. Two heads bobbed back and forth a silent but emphatic ‘no’. The woman from marketing, the one he recognized, signaled a thumb down. The deputy director sitting next to the empty chair whispered “that is where the director sits, that is his chair” and so he inched backwards around the table to another chair.