Blank Space: The Elephant Has Left The Room

Post-Blank Space: 1/31/15.

Well, I got what I asked for. Early this morning, my beloved KHP elephant chair performed a disappearing act and vacated the premises, leaving a blank space in its wake.

Matt's cousin Caroline arrived bright and early -- much earlier than I would normally be up and about on a Saturday -- and Matt and I hauled the oversized piece down the elevator and loaded it into Caroline's Wrangler. 

The timing was perhaps for the better, because it allowed me to say goodbye before I'd really come to terms with the event and also allowed me to play around with the suddenly blank space and capture a photo in the early morning light, when the light is the prettiest.

When I realized yesterday that this moment would occur so soon, I spent a final evening with my elephant last night, curled up in its loving arms, appreciating the last decade of my life and how much I had loved lounging in that ridiculous chair in the various spaces it has occupied over the past nine years.

Because that's the thing: I love to splay out in oversized chairs. (Is there anyone who doesn't?) As I lounged there in the dim light of night, I felt a sense of calm and acceptance and gratitude for what the chair had given me. And I felt ready to let go.

And now, today, when the chair had performed its disappearing act, I enjoyed the opportunity to fill the void that was suddenly there: The blank space I had been given; the clean slate, empty canvas, call it what you will. We kept the little side table (a cheapy TV tray that has stood in as a side table for as long as I can remember) with its CB2 pig bookends and West Elm task lamp and cool engraved silver tray that we received as an unexpectedly wonderful wedding gift, and moved one of our twin lambskin-covered Eames-y chairs over to the space and went full Domino Mag with the look. The twins are now separated, which gives them a sense of independence and adds a nice harmony to the room overall.

Why did this all happen before I'd managed to suck down my first Keurig coffee? Because blank space excites me. Because if you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk. And because the answer to the question of what to do with a blank space is always, always, to fill it.

Even if you don't want to. Even if you want to keep the space blank. Because that is nature's way.

In design, we talk of negative space. And in science, we talk of entropy. In life, I think we just talk of living. And where one lives, one needs a chair. And one also has a tendency -- an entirely natural and impossible to fight tendency -- to fill up space with.... stuff. Because blank space is an invitation to make your mark.

And who can refuse an invitation like that?

Happy Space Filling!
KK

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After

Post-Blank Space: 1/31/2015.

Before

Pre-Blank Space: 1/31/15.