FEBRUARY
You love vintage and antique furniture, Virgo. Visiting shops with relics from eras past (like 2004!), gives you a strong affection for humanity that can be otherwise difficult to harness. It’s challenging to feel steadfast cynicism when you look at someone’s meticulously maintained bedroom set posthumously posing in a Brooklyn storefront. How can you imagine the worst in humankind when a perfect little monogrammed linen napkin managed decades of unlikely survival? What cold heart couldn’t thaw from a glimpse of an orate ceramic container too small to really be of any practical use, but nevertheless existing?
I know this is supposed to be wisdom about February, but please put your trust in me for a minute when I take us on a journey through time and space to begin this tale back in June. I know you basically have no memories from your entire life, so let me set the scene:
In June you were months into replacing all of your living room furniture from personality-free modern pieces to furniture possessing, in many ways, far too much personality. You couldn't replace every piece at once, so this time period was full of uninhibited juxtaposition—but not in a fun way like how every movie scores a violent scene with a jaunty, old-timey song—alas, this juxtaposition was more sickening. Who could thrive on a pink, velvet, Victorian couch when it gazes upon a Besta Credenza from IKEA? The skies have no beef with IKEA (except in their manufacturing practices…which…feel free to look up), but bright white modern pieces simply do not belong alongside character drenched couches.
To avoid the preeminent nausea guaranteed to anyone living alongside such perverse incongruity, you developed a subconscious self-defense practice of dulling your senses. Or at least that’s the only explanation I can think of for how you managed not to see the writing on the wall.
I’m getting ahead of myself. You frequent a vintage store in your neighborhood, both for purchasing and for taking your occasional (too occasional) mental health strolls (as is well documented, you prefer to get your walking done on a treadmill while watching reality television—which is, medically, profoundly worse for your mental health than simply remaining stationary for the entirety of your life).
During your time spent perusing the shop, you’ve developed a friendly relationship with the owners. However, getting along with you isn’t something they’re necessarily doing for fun, Virgo. It’s actually a business strategy, since they’re savvy enough to know that without your patronage they’d never manage to sell all of the strange portraits of haunted women for which you seem to have an endless capacity to love.
That’s not all you came to love in this shop. In June, they boasted a piece of furniture so ideal, so clearly the salvation to the glaring dissonance you were living inside, that you finally saw a way out of your furniture purgatory. A perfect credenza.
Atop the credenza of your dreams, the owners had placed a sign announcing that not only is it gorgeous, but that it likely dates back to the late 19th century. I’m eternal, and even I recognize the appeal of such a relic.
You and your husband told the owners you couldn’t live without it and rearranged the rest of your day to accommodate moving it into your space. You borrowed the owners’ work gloves and dolly, listened to their lesson on maneuvering such a dolly, shrugged off their grave warnings about the unexpected weight of this credenza and began your walk home.
I won’t go too much into detail here Virgo, but you used the dolly (following the owner’s instructions) so preposterously incorrectly that two people stopped to correct your form on the way home. Both were laughing while they explained. Your husband has had an on again off again back injury ever since, but you forgave the owners for their faulty instructions. Who couldn’t find a little forgiveness for the people helping you become the owners of a piece of craftsman history?
Fast forward to February, Virgo. The here and now. You’re in your living room that is finally united in its singular flavor of insane, gazing at your magical credenza. You love your ancient credenza so wholeheartedly that you begin searching online for a similar piece for the bedroom. Fortunately, finding a similar design is less complicated than you anticipated. Unfortunately, this is because your credenza from the “late 19th century” is currently for sale at Home Depot.
That’s right. The credenza that inspired your home’s every visitor to crouch before it, gently tracing the design with their finger tips, cooing and cawing in awe of its craftsmanship, is mass produced by Home Depot. Sure, you love your credenza. But love has a tendency to make us ignore certain truths. As Borges said, “To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.” In this case, Virgo, the fallibility of your god is that it was not made in the late 1800’s by a daring, prolific mason. It was made in a warehouse as recently as last May.
There were some signs, sure. Like the fact that the credenza appears to be perfect, more so an indication of a factory make and not of a superhuman woodworker from the 1890s. The drawers pull in and out easily, requiring no careful maneuvering to get them just right. There are virtually no quirks or inconveniences present in the credenza, which are endemic in every other piece of old furniture you possess.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with Home Depot, Virgo. Your home is, in many ways, a tribute to the diversity of ceiling fans available at Home Depot (you have four models within 600 square feet). A person looks to Home Depot for air ventilation, for stoves, for practicality. You do not look to Home Depot to indulge romantic fantasies about the past.
This discovery leaves you feeling less than enthusiastic about the business owners that at best know little about their industry and confidently present as otherwise, or at worst intentionally misled you. Is it hilarious to trick a Brooklyn couple who fancies themselves shrewd consumers into buying something current and mass produced? Of course. But that doesn’t make it right, Virgo.
Even knowing what you know now, your credenza is still the loveliest piece of furniture you’ve ever owned. Is it possible that objects don’t actually need to exist for 100+ years to be interesting? Instead of (rightly) accusing the local shopkeepers of being charlatans, I suggest looking inward as to why you need abstraction to appreciate beauty. However, knowing all as I do, I can see you won’t be able to resist sending them a link to the ancient artifact Home Depot makes and being a little bit of a bitch about it too.
"I won’t go too much into detail here Virgo, but you used the dolly (following the owner’s instructions) so preposterously incorrectly that two people stopped to correct your form on the way home. Both were laughing while they explained." <-- you describe things in a way that makes me visualize them so perfectly; but also kinda wish for video evidence so I could see just WHAT exactly was so wrong about your form! I will def check out your husband's music, even though his tour isn't bringing him through Florida (it's okay; I'm used to it)