LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION: A KITCHEN WINDOW

"When it’s done right, [an] arrangement displays 
the personality of the arranger as much as it does 
the objects themselves."

Be Your Own Decorator, Susanna Salk

A kitchen sink with a view is, by definition, a little luxury: it means that you are not doing something with dishes while staring at a wall. The option of a view gives the washer of the dishes or the filler of pots a chance to daydream, just a bit, and chase ideas while gazing at a scene beyond. Of course, a gaze-able vignette can also be on the near side of the panes if the windowsill, just uphill from the sink, is arranged with a thoughtful array of items.

Ponder for a moment, as the dish washer ponders, this assortment: a petite canning jar of used popsicle sticks; a tub of hand cream and one of hand sanitizer; a kiwifruit folding in on itself; headache pills; a four-sided jar of dried mushrooms and twigs; a key on a ball chain; a dried tomato vine, bereft of fruit; and a green decorative tin of balm originally developed for cow udders.

What conversations could you have with yourself over this arrangement? Would you meditate on the sculptural beauty of dried things, or calculate the rate of decay of an oblong fruit? Your thoughts could turn to self-care, to the relief of pain, and the smoothness of lotioned skin. Would the key spark a memory of something locked away, or a door to be opened, abstract or physical? You may recall an herbal remedy involving mushrooms and twigs, or create a mental list on the uses of popsicle sticks.

Or you may even fantasize about taking covert action: it is your parents’ kitchen window, not yours, so your rights to rearrange are limited. While you are removing dust and insect particles from glassware, you could be calculating how to unobtrusively transfer the kiwifruit to the compost bin, what distraction to employ in order to throw out the mushrooms and the twigs and the tomato vine, and how to move the meds to the bathroom cabinet and the hand creams to a drawer. You’d do all this so that you can scrub the sill as you are scrubbing the dishes. Yet you leave these secret plans in the realm of ruminations and turn away after the last pan is cleaned.