{"id":4796,"date":"2021-09-12T07:59:31","date_gmt":"2021-09-12T14:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/?p=4796"},"modified":"2021-09-12T07:59:31","modified_gmt":"2021-09-12T14:59:31","slug":"the-rug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/archives\/4796","title":{"rendered":"The Rug"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Marcia and I are thinking of getting a new rug for the living room, our ten-year-old, four-hundred-dollar Cost Plus rug from India badly frayed from constant heavy use. Marcia has begun shopping around online and I am reminded of my last search for a rug twenty-six years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I moved to Berkeley from Sacramento in 1995. Recently divorced and hoping to revive my writing career and my emotional life, too, I was off to a good start with the sale of my novel Ruby & Spear<\/a><\/em> and a movie option on my novel Forgotten Impulses<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having a little jingle\nin my pocket for the first time in many years, I thought I\u2019d buy a beautiful\nrug for the living room of the house I was renting on Evelyn Avenue. To that\nend, I enlisted my friend Mindy to accompany me to a Persian Rug store on\nSolano Avenue, a store I\u2019d walked by countless times, the rugs displayed in the\nwindow ever-changing and always enticing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A handsome Persian\nfellow sitting at a desk at the back of the shop looked up as we entered. \u201cMay\nI help you?\u201d he asked, and I said Yes<\/em>.\nWhen he joined us, I informed him I was looking for a six-foot by eight-foot\nrug in the thousand-dollar range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He smiled faintly and\nled us to a stack of rugs. With the help of an assistant he removed the top rug\nto show us the next one down and so forth until he came to a rug that elicited\nan interested Hmm<\/em> from me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow much for this one?\u201d\nI asked hopefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNineteen hundred\ndollars,\u201d he said, smiling politely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ah,\u201d I said, the sum\npetrifying. \u201cI was thinking of something closer to a thousand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m very sorry to tell\nyou this, sir,\u201d he said, no longer smiling, \u201cbut our store is not for you\nunless you are looking for a much smaller rug.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This piqued me and I decided\nI could spend as much as fifteen hundred if he showed me something I really loved.\nI told him so and he sighed. \u201cI have a few flawed rugs I can show you, but they\nare only four by six or three by five. I don\u2019t think you\u2019ll like them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At which moment another\nhandsome Persian fellow emerged from the back of the store, he and the first\nfellow had a brief conversation in Farsi, the second fellow gave me a\npenetrating look and asked, \u201cAre you an artist?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I said I was a writer\nand a musician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He nodded graciously and\nbeckoned us to follow him to another stack of rugs, much finer rugs than those in\nthe first stack. He and the assistant slowly removed the top rug, allowed us a\nfew moments to contemplate the newly exposed rug, and so on until four rugs\ndown they uncovered the most beautiful rug I\u2019d ever seen. Or I should say they\nuncovered a rug that sang to me, \u201cI\u2019m the one, baby. You know I am.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou were meant to have\nthis rug,\u201d said the salesman, gazing at me knowingly. \u201cThis rug was made<\/em> for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow much?\u201d I asked\nbreathlessly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause I very much want\nyou to have this rug,\u201d he said, pausing momentously, \u201cI will give it to you for\n3400 dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s way beyond what\nI can spare,\u201d I said, which was true in one sense, but in another sense \u2013 the\nspiritual truth \u2013 I could have spared that much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou need to buy this\nrug,\u201d he said, gazing intently at me. \u201cIt will change your life. This rug has\nbeen waiting for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I did not buy the rug and my fortunes quickly waned. A year later my savings were gone and I was barely making enough to cover my rent and pay for groceries. And every time I walked by that rug shop on Solano Avenue I would think about my beautiful rug and regret I hadn\u2019t been brave enough to take the beauty home with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

fin<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Risking Delight<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marcia and I are thinking of getting a new rug for the living room, our ten-year-old, four-hundred-dollar Cost Plus rug from India badly frayed from constant heavy use. Marcia has begun shopping around online and I am reminded of my last search for a rug twenty-six years ago. * I moved to Berkeley from Sacramento […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5721,6994,369,6989,6993,221,6988,6992,6990,6991,4305],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4800,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4796\/revisions\/4800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}