DAYINTHELIFEOFA CARPET
I am Carpet.
Red.
Red is my first name – Carpet is my family name of course. Don’t you have a family name - like “People” for instance?
What’s my address? What do you want to know for? Eh? Eh?
“Just curious.”
The last time I answered that question for someone who was “just curious” I found myself rolled up in the back of a truck that smelled of pig’s feet that hadn’t been washed in a year.
“I wanted to know because I am writing about you and I can’t just write about carpets I don’t know about.”
Writing about me? You know I’m famous then?
Carpet preened a bit and tried to look in the big windows he used as a mirror
“Of course”
So you want to write my biocarpetography then? You want to put me in print then?
“Yes if you will let me”
Ah. Well my address is Cannes. THE Cannes.
“Ah?”
Yes. THE Croisette (there is only one) and I – I – I (said Red Carpet, ruffling his threads so as to point at his chest had he been a people) am on the steps of THE Palais de Festival and even if it does look like a blockhouse, it looks MUCH better with me on its steps and I go all the way from the top right down to the
street. In red of course, because I am red you see.
“Oh! Ha!”
E.V.E.R.Y.B.O.D.Y. who is anybody (and a lot of people who are nobody too) go up and down my steps. I’ve got stories to tell, I can tell you. Anybody who is worth their weight in hot air and publicity craves to go up and down MY personal stairs during Film Festival week.
I get two kinds of people.
There are thin ones with front bumpers – they tend to have a thin weave – and then there are thicker ones. I’m not sure why the thin ones have bumpers. I think because they are thin, they are sensitive to bad breath so they wear bumpers to make sure the thick ones stay at least a breath away.
What do I see?
Well, an awful lot of legs of course.
What’s up the skirts of the thin ones?
Why ever do you ask that? What’s wrong with you? Why, leg’s of course. That’s obvious.
What about bottoms? What are these “bottoms” you are talking about?
They are at the top of the legs? Don’t be completely silly, how can a bottom be at the top of a leg? On the bottom of the legs are feet and tires or what passes for tires in people. I think you are completely mixed up. I’ve never seen any of these “bottoms” you talk about.
First you have tires, then you have legs, then you get a bare bit in the middle with the wiggly thing in the center where they tied off all the knots when they wove it, and then you have the bumpers and you finish that off with the top trim, just like I have a gold edge trim. The thick ones are just the same except they have no bumpers and usually cover up their middles. But quite often, when a thick one gets near a thin one, its legs go all wobbly. It must be the bumper effect because I can’t see anything else to account for it.
Anything else you don’t understand? I can go on explaining you know, if you want.
My neighbors? You want to know about my neighbors?
