Interior Designs

In a series of short interlinked prose vignettes, Sherril Jaffe explores the multiple meanings of "home": an inner space, spiritual extension of ourselves; a place of shelter and protection from an impermanent world; a potential storehouse of profound affective memories. From "Our Flat Was Built":"These dusty shelves reminded me of what I had seen once visiting in the house of a couple I never really got to know. Inside the bathroom of that house, beside the sink, were a set of glass shelves. The woman of the house was somewhat shorter than I, and, while the bottom two shelves were sparkling clean, the ones higher up were, like my kitchen shelves, covered in dust. She didn't see them, so she didn't dust them. From her point of view, the house was clean. However, she was limited by her point of view, and later I heard that her husband divorced her."