Love for the Inanimate

Tuesday 27 July 2010


vintage cafetière

This morning, as I stood patiently watching my ancient baby cafetière brew a smoky hazelnut coffee for my anticipatory consumption, it wasn't the mesmerising blue flames of the gas stove top that caught my attention. It was the sudden rush of memory.

The long weeks driving through Europe in a Kombi van in the height of winter, roasting our ground coffee beans over the van's mini stove... sitting above an Olympic ski run in the Dolomites in Italy, warming our toes and sipping that coffee is only one searing memory that brought tears to my eyes.

Upon feeling this memory from my hair through to my toes, I casually bent at the waist, lowered my face to that cafetière and I said to it this:

I love you. I really do. Yes, I really really really love you, you inanimate object, you. I love you.
Moments later, it responded with that happy liquid amber gurgle that sent both our hearts racing in mutual respect.

When I straightened up again, I laughed out loud - true, heart-felt, passionate love for an inanimate object? Yes. As I looked around my kitchen and walked into my office, I realised there were many objects I am really truly and utterly enamoured by.

Here are another four I found...


Maurice Sendak's Chicken Soup with Rice

the bible (apologies, J-man)

my mantra

my heart
What about you? What FIVE ITEMS do you emphatically, heart-stoppingly, sickeningly love? Leave a comment below and let me know. They have to be items that literally make your heart race and that you couldn't imagine life without. Just wander your house and the first FIVE items you see that you emphatically love, are IT.

To find out more about this inanimate object obsession, I am also tagging several people to find out what five items rock their world. They are:

Wynona Leach

Sheryl Gwyther

Watch their blogs for their own Inanimate Love posts!

6 comments:

Emma Grey said...

Love your post, Tania.

If the house was on fire, I would grab a box containing the diaries I wrote all through my teen years, from about fourteen onwards... I'm hoping to use them as a refresher guide for my daughters in a couple of years!

I've also got some ratty old t-shirts that survive the annual throw-out every year, despite the fact that they will never be worn again, because they have such sentimental value - usually from places I've been.

The newest 'must keep' is the gorgeous Venetian mask I bought last month, symbolising the beautiful trip to Italy that my husband and I just had prior to our baby arriving in November. I look at it and can only think of romance and gorgeousness!!

Megan Blandford said...

Ooh, I love it!! Will do it soon - thanks for the tag, lovely!

Susan Whelan said...

This will be fun. One immediately came to mind (my grandmother's piano), but I will have to do a lap of the house to come up with some more. I will write up a post soon.

Love the idea.

Anonymous said...

Why Maurice Sendak's Chicken Soup with Rice? Do we get another blog post explaining that one please? :)

I have a few secret inanimate loves. I mustn't reveal them, lest people realise how dysfunctional I am for loving the unlovable. But I love them just the same, and possibly it helps me to stay in love with them that we have our little secret romance.

Tiny Concept said...

Tania, I will get to mine today, I hope!!!

Tania McCartney said...

Em, I grew up on this book - the rhyme is exquisite and of course, I remember being fascinated by the gorgeous pictures. Sendak at his best. x

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...