Your Lamp

for my friend Sarah DeLucero, who gave me the lamp that I just traded for another lamp:


Sarah:

It had reached a point where your lamp simply seemed too large for my house. With its great arch and brass bulb swinging lazily over my head as I read, it had come to completely dominate my living room and my head space, and while I loved it deeply and thought it was simply too wonderful to be gotten rid of, I knew the time was coming when I would have to remove it from my world.

I made a list - the plan was to first buy one of those simple, inobtrusive halogen-style things, THEN dismantle the lamp and put it into the yard sale pile, which has been growing by leaps and bounds weekly since I returned from Mexico. I kept putting it off because when I wanted to do make the trip to Wal-Mart, I had no cash, and when I had cash, there seemed to be better things to do than go to Wal-Mart.

But tonight was most definitely meant to be the night. Tonight I had the cash. Tonight I had the time for Wal-Mart. So the switch was about to begin, though I still hadn't been able to figure out *exactly* what to do with the lamp when I had a replacement for it, since I was so very much in love with it and wanted a good home for it, and a yard sale just didn't seem able to do it justice.

And then providence intervened. A woman in my life who works as a lighting designer came to my house and was overwhelmed by the lamp - and how her eyes lit up when she heard I didn't want it anymore. "It would be perfect in my studio," she said, and I nodded in agreement, for I had seen her studio and knew that the lamp, looking so awkward in my house, would look graceful and stately in her studio, as it was meant to be seen. "What do you want for it?"

I told her she could have the lamp for the price of a halogen - $25, but that she'd have to take me to Wal-Mart and buy it for me. She was only too happy to do so, and even came in when we got home and helped me put together. We dismantled the old lamp - your lamp - and I brought it outside to her car, noticing the little strip of red tape that I'd used to fix the wire when I received it from you, so long ago, with a split power chord and had to fix it myself.

We'd been through a lot together, me and that old lamp, and now that it was leaving, my only consolation was that it was going to someone who clearly loved it as much as I.

cheers
gregoryp(tm)