Killspeak

My mother returned from a long weekend trip with a gift for me: a mouse-pad. What could be more insignificant than a mouse-pad? Hasn’t the floppy pad that came with my copy of Max Payne served well for the past few years? Is it not likely to serve well for many more? Perhaps, yes, but it can’t compare to a MouseRug.

This splendid Qashqa’i shekarlu rug covers… Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic couch. The brilliantly coloured rug was made by one of the nomadic tribes of the Qashqa’i confederacy in Persia in the nineteenth century. Freud’s patients reclined on this rug, recounting their memories, dreams, and fantasies.

I’ve not much good to say of Freud’s theories of mind, but his taste in rugs was fantastic. The Freud MouseRug has transformed my desk. The mess of notes, books, and CDs that litter the surface around my computer screen no longer looks ugly and confused. It now appears to be the active workspace of a cultured eclectic. Alone, the new mouse-pad would be ostentatious, but in the context of my mess, it’s friendly and well-read.