interior

Interior design is probably one of those things with its own section in dating guidebooks.

The Queen Anne table and those Italian-influenced modern-design shelves; the "Under Construction" banner that was swiped during a drunken binge; the bookshelf, casually arranged to show only books on difficult seeming subjects; maybe even those tiny panties you have pinned up there on your wall, with the excuse that you thought they seemed cute: everybody owns stuff that they've put there just for the sake of other people. 

Interior designs guard against the silence between words— they make up for their owners' lack of verbal finesse. 

When a guest takes a look around, they're guessing at what kinds of things the room's owner has in their mind, and whether they might be a kind person or not.

The room's owner, knowing this, will stop talking once they realize that their guest is just gazing around at everything. 

"What a nice room!"

"It's all just cheap stuff..."

"It's so you. It's cute!"

"Hey, take a look at this. If you look closely at the design on this curtain there's squirrels holding chestnuts!"

"Ah, so there are! You know, this squirrel kinda looks like you..."

"Oh wow... Oh! No, stop that. Umn-"

and that's how interior designs play a vital role by filling in for words while you're keeping company.

Now, there may be people out there who will hang up squirrel curtains and buy potted plants to stare at in rooms where no one ever visits, but that's more like keeping a diary. There's really nothing strange about having a non-social interior.

Once in a while there might also be somebody who says something like "I just love the color red, so I coordinated the entire room's interior in red!" but that's just like throwing a wild party every single night. It would make your social life rather difficult in my opinion.

What I'm really currently interested in is finding out where the limits of interior design are in the placement of household Buddhist altars.

-i