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Two Mattress Fables

When I told Marcia the stories I am about to tell you, she said I should write them up and post them on my blog, so here they are.

Mattress Fable #1

We just bought a new king-sized mattress to replace our thirteen-year-old king-sized mattress. Marcia didn’t mind our old mattress, but I found it misshapen and uncomfortable and thought I would sleep better on a good new mattress. Marcia sleeps like a log every night, I do not.

When the new mattress arrived, two strong men carried the big thing into our bedroom, leaned it against a wall, and lifted the old mattress off the plywood platform and wrapped it in the gigantic plastic bag the new mattress came in. I was curious about why they were taking so much care with the old mattress and asked, “What do you do with these old mattresses?”

“Usually we take them to the dump,” said the man in charge. “But your mattress is in such good shape, I’m giving it to my girlfriend. She just got a new place and needs a bed. This is perfect. She’ll love it.”

Mattress Fable #2

When I was a teenager, circa 1967, the mother of a friend of mine was a professional painter and collage artist. She and her husband were wealthy and collected art by famous artists. Their large modern house was a veritable modern art gallery surrounded by a manicured sculpture garden.

One day I arrived at my friend’s house and found two burly guys had backed their big truck up to the front patio of the beautiful home to pick up things to take to the dump, including a king-sized mattress and box springs. My friend’s parents were also getting rid of lots of other stuff they had piled on the patio.

There was also on this patio, not far from the pile of things destined for the dump, a metal sculpture by an artist so famous his works were frequently shown in the Museum of Modern Art and in other prestigious museums around the world; and several of his monumental works were displayed on plazas in major cities.

I will make an aerial-view sketch of the sculpture in question with the disclaimer that sketching things is not my forte. As you will see, the sculpture was composed of three identical pieces of shiny silver metal, possibly aluminum, about nine feet in length and two-inches-square. Each separate piece was raised on legs (not visible in the sketch) about a foot off the ground, and each piece was quite heavy.

As is true of all works of art, beauty is in eye of the beholder. I would also suggest that whether something is art or not is also in the eye of the beholder. Which is to say, the two men loading the mattress and box springs and other stuff being thrown away did not distinguish between the stuff going to the dump and the forty-thousand-dollar work of art, and they loaded the three-part sculpture into their truck on top of the king-sized mattress and would have driven away with their load had I not arrived in the nick of time and informed them of their faux pas.

With great haste they unloaded the three pieces of metal and tried to arrange them as they were supposed to go. As it happened, I had been present at the gala unveiling of this sculpture (my friend’s mother hired me to ply the crowd with finger food) and I knew how the pieces went in relation to each other. By a second stroke of good fortune we got the sculpture properly reassembled just as my friend’s mother came out to pay the men for making the dump run.

Several morals come to mind: One person’s garbage is another person’s gold. One person’s gold is another person’s garbage. Art is subjective. Reality is subjective. Life can be a hoot.

fin

Real Good Joe from Todd’s album Through the Fire