Decorating

Our modern society is engaged in polishing and decorating the cage in which man is kept imprisoned.

~ Swami Nirmalananda

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When Leslie said that she wanted to fashion the living room after 1968, I thought it was meant to be a tribute to me and my birth year.  Then I realized what interior design looked like in 1968 and hoped it was a joke.  She did look awfully comfortable in the living room of the past, though.

In my defense I was too small as an infant to do any interior decorating or even to use language to express my dislike of the style of the times.  Now, if my parents had taught me sign language, I could perhaps have warned them about how this all would look in slides and photographs decades later.  But they didn't teach me sign language.  I don't know what they were thinking.  I guess maybe they anticipated me growing up and learning to use utensils at the dinner table and didn't want me talking with my hands full.

Or maybe it was that they didn't know sign language.  I guess, this issue goes back generations.