Art on the Bathroom Wall

I just hung the first piece of art in my new apartment. In the bathroom. Not the living room – well, I guess it’s the living room slash dining room slash kitchen – not the office (aka second bedroom), and not the bedroom. The bathroom.

For one thing, the arrangement of the room was pretty much set, with the major items being built-in – bath & shower, toilet, and sink. Not much for me to do here. And the walls were empty. The other rooms are still piled with boxes and furniture, so I wasn’t and still am not sure just what art will go where.

It’s not that I planned it this way. I didn’t have any particular plan for where the art would go – I’ve got quite a bit, most of it my own. I certainly didn’t plan to put any art on the bathroom wall.

It just happened. Yet I’d like to think there’s a certain justice about how things have worked it. Perhaps a bit of art.

In some obvious ways this is the nicest apartment I’ve had, ever. I’ve lived most of my adult life as an independent scholar. Independent means I can study what I wanted to study, when I wanted to study it. And publish on the same schedule. That’s very important. Independent also means that I don’t hold an academic post and hence no steady income – though most academic posts are none too steady these days. That’s important too, though not at all desireable nor desired. It’s just a fact of my life.

So, when I say it’s my nicest apartment, don’t get grand visions of luxury living or even semi-luxury living. This is a small two-bedroom apartment, in a newly renovated building, with new appliances of decent quality in a poor part of Jersey City across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan. I’m not on the waterfront nor even in view of it, but I can walk to Liberty State Park, and that Park looks out on the backside of the Statue of Liberty.

Not too bad for perpetual student living.

So, the bathroom. On the whole it’s the nicest bathroom I’ve had, though the tub was deeper and a bit longer at 2nd Street in Troy, NY. The fixtures are all new. There’s nice false-stone tile on the floor, up the walls, and around the bath. There’s a single window just above the bathtub, which is very convenient. Not only do I get a little natural light in the bath, but the window sill can serve as a shelf on which to place my shampoo and conditioner.

I’m going to enjoy soaking in the tub. Yes I am, yes I am. The place where I lived for the past year and a quarter didn’t have a bathtub, just a small shower stall. I do like taking showers, but they’re just the start. Once I’ve showered I like to sit in the tub and just think. On occasion, read a bit, and I’ve even rolled the TV in – but that was years ago. Mostly I just like to think. And warm up the water when it gets too cool. Think some more. Warm it up. Think.

But I couldn’t do that for the past year. Now I can. Return. Once again. To soaking.

And when I get done soaking, I get out of the tub, stand on the bathmat, and dry off.

NOT!

Not anymore. No more crappy bathmats. The floor in this bathroom is just large enough that I was able to put a small Oriental rug – three by five – on the floor.

When the idea first hit me I thought “Are you crazy! You can’t put an Oriental rug on the bathroom floor. You need a bathmat. A proper bathmat, something made to go on the bathroom floor. I mean, isn’t putting a rug on the bathroom floor some kind of taboo violation? Doesn’t it upset the order of things? I mean, that’s a real Oriental carpet, all wool – though the dyes don’t look natural – and hand made. It’s almost a luxury item, even if I bought it at Macy’s over a decade ago. On the bathroom floor? It ain’t natural.”

So I had to work through all that. It helped that I’d just seen a piece in The New York Times about some rich folks home that had several Oriental rugs scattered on the floor of a rather large bathroom that I’ll never have but would dearly love to have because then I could have a big screen TV in there and watch movies while soaking and wouldn’t that be nice! But I do have room for a small Oriental rug and I’ve got the rug, too. So there it goes, on the bathroom floor.

It feels so good.

And that, more or less, is how I came around to thinking I needed some real art on the bathroom wall. And my great aunt’s needlepoint sampler is perfect. It’s of modest size, a little over two by three feet, though my aunt would have measured in metric, and is framed and glassed, so it’s protected. It’s got my name at the bottom in large letters, ”Larry Benzon” – “Lawrence” is my middle name, and I was called by it so as to avoid confusion with my father, who is also “Bill.” Above that we have scenes from Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales: “The Little Mermaid,” “The Tim Soldier,” “The Princess and the Pea,” and others that I don’t recognize.

My aunt made it for me, oh, when I was very young, as I’ve always had it. We never met, this great aunt and me. She lived in Denmark, where my father’s parents were from. I’m not even sure of the exact relationship between us, though I believe that she was my grandfather’s sister.

She’s thus mostly a mythological being. But her needlepoint sampler is quite real.

And quite lovely.

On the wall.

In my bathroom.