What is it that is so nice about a dinner table? People eat at the table, they make arrangements over the dinner table, they execute plans and live out their life from the dinner table. Dinner tables are where we learn how to put food in our mouth without spilling it all over our face. It's where we want to bring our family as we relish in the times we've had together. Among our seemingly infinite memories there are endless stories around the dinner table. We bring our family from our parents to our children, friends and more just to sit around this inordinate peice of carved material. We dress it, we wash it, we place it is areas we basically treat as sanctified. Who wouldn't have a fond memory of a dinner table in their lifetime? Throughout every home (pretty much) people have dinner tables, it's as if a home is incomplete without one. The dinner table is a peice of furniture, but when we look at it closer it is far more than just a heap of parts covered in messes and clothes.
Why is it that that the table has survived through time past lifetime of species, the fables of legend, and past the use of our daily convention? The table hasn't been around longer than the fossils in the ground, it hasn't been apart of every early civilization. Tables weren't even used for dinners and social gatherings until later in their years. Who knows when we decided that we should place our meals on top of a surface apart from the ground. Who knows why people even thought of it as being a good idea! Tables were probably the sophisticated ancenstors to large rocks and tree stumps. When we decided that carving lumps of wood into flat surfaces paired with a stump or two for elevated legs for the sake of convience or what ever it was for we hadn't known at that time that we would've thrown a bunch of silver and cloth over top of it and etched it into it our primitive art. The table is the symbol of our primeval culture, it's a visual testament to our technological advances. Today we don't even put that much thought into what a table means, let alone what a dinner table is. The dinner table itself has become an extended part of ourselves, without even knowing it! The dinner table is like a unsung hero, a legend resting in the epitaphs of forgotten tombs.
Why the hell are we looking at tables in wonder, you may ask! Who care's what we put stuff on and who cares what a table is! You may be a busy person and you don't have time for table talk. But you do have a need for it. All your life you've wandered the abyss of existence like a ghost haunting the a non existentant realm. You eat things you don't understand, you drink things without hesitation, you take the world for granted. You wander this life thinking you are the master of your own dwelling yet you are a puppet to a table. You need table talk, my friend. This seemingly innocuous thing has been standing in front of you your entire life and like a blind person you've never really seen it. You haven't seen the table before other than in your periphereal vision yet you are drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Like a sirens song or a thirst for hydration you find yourself in orbit to something you never even knew drew your attention. If this is only a table, what else is it to life that you cannot see? If this table is a part of you, then what else is?
We've sat at tables adorned and exulted all our lives and we forget about it all, our memories, the reasons why we did it, the reasons why we dressed the table and struggled to find the money to pay for it all. So, I would like to ask you to do something. I'd like you to forget about tables for the moment. Just a moment and imagine something. Imagine yourself in a world without tables. What would a world without tables look like? Would it be a living hell? Would it be insignificant? Would it be heavenly? What would you do without tables? Do you carry your food in pouches you carry on your belt? Do you stand all the time? How might that feel? Would you feel safer? More comfortable? Going back to reality it's a far different world. One you would be happy to be back to. But this time let's go back to the world of tables and remember the meals and gatherings you may have had at the dinner table. I remember my household table growing up as a kid was ugly. It was shouting thrift store across the neighborhood. My siblings were actually relatively normal at the time at food and sat at the table like civilized people. We followed the rules of the table, we did as we were told to do and what was expected from us. We didn't like being there though. We didn't like the horrible meals presented to us. Mac and cheese over cooked smothered in generic ketchup, half cold on the top and half hot on the bottom. Worst of all I had to actually act like I was a part of a family that I would have rather not been a part of at that time. Somehow I tolerated sitting next to people I distained and rivaled with as an overbearing mama bear screamed "Order! Order! Order!" from the whereabouts of the kitchen. I never really knew anything at that time other than the foul smell and taste of dinner and my company. Looking back this single arbitrary material brought together a household of miscreants and little devils, underneath the supervision of a tyrant of coarse. But this table wasn't just my suffering through tyranny, little did I know I'd be sitting at my own table later in life.
There's one main reason I'd talk about table talk. That is to open your mind. Dinner tables aren't just something we fill our house with. They are so much more. But most importantly they are very symbolic. At these tables you learn culture, you learn ettiquette, you develop character, and there's more. The cultural aspects go without notice and are easily forgotten. Focusing on the culture aspect for a moment, there's things about it you lose track of too. You forget your heritage and you take it for granted, as well as you forget a major part of who you are, the table is a part of you. What we may learn from the table is a variety of things in this regard. But the most important thing is open mindness and recollection. It goes further than that too. Tables aren't just peices of furniture, they are also extremities of your mechanical and cognitive function. It's not just a coincidence that mankind developed tables. They were a part of our innate destiny. These tables aren't just a bunch of memories and mannerisms, they reveal parts of our heing so deep that we could never hope to imagine it all.
I could go on and on about tables but perhaps I have done enough in the hopes and getting your brains working. I hope that you have enjoyed a moment of thinking beyond our ordinary mindsets. I actually could go further into things like what this means psychologically, what it means artistically and what other significances can be established. but for now I'll leave it at an end. I hope you release that table talk isn't just about tables, it's about you and your mind. It can be anything else talked about, hell who really cares about tables anyways.
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