Napping on a shag carpet

May 30, 2010

One day recently, feeling sunburned and weary from exertion, I lowered myself to the living room floor to rest on the white shag carpet that sits between our two sofas. The soft wool enveloped me, and I quickly dozed off.

When I woke — just a few minutes later, this being an active househould — I found myself thinking back to the summer naps I’d take as an 11-year-old after afternoon baseball games or laps at the swimming pool. The living room in our Idaho home was carpeted in a golden shag, and I’d curl up in a corner where the sun came through the front window.

That was the same place I’d often sit to listen to my parents’ records, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme by Simon and Garfunkel or The Age of Aquarius by the Fifth Dimension, or play the mbira that had somehow found its way into the house.

One day, a fever-induced delirium woke me from my nap on the carpet. I’d been dreaming, somehow, in both miniature and large scale, about tiny pebbles coming at me in slow motion like asteroids at the Millenium Falcon. While that unsettling pressurized dreamstate is burned into my memory, fortunately I’ve never woken to that feeling again.

My feet are resting on the carpet as I type this, and I’m feeling sleepy again.

Anton Zuiker ☄