canvases

I was waiting at my grandmother’s house for the courier to come and deliver canvases, early in the morning. The truck arrived but instead of parking in the driveway, the driver maneuvered the truck up onto the verandah, blocking the doorway. My father and I could not sidle around the truck so we took the old goods lift, which suddenly appeared in the wall, downstairs to the garage, intending to guide the truck downstairs so that we could transfer the canvases directly into the lift. Once there, I realised that the truck was too tall to fit in the garage so my father and I told the courier that we would meet him upstairs, if the driver could pass the goods from the back of the truck into where we would be waiting in the loungeroom. We hopped back into the lift and pressed the button. The lift traveled up and past our floor, the doors not opening, and then it began to behave erratically. First it plummeted toward the ground. I called to my father, asking him to curl his legs up off the floor so that, should we crash, our legs would not be broken. Next the lift shot off sideways down the street, cruising down several blocks before returning to the garage. By the time we made it back, the courier had left and had unpacked the canvases into the garage. Instead of four canvases of the correct size, there appeared to be about thirty five canvases of very odd sizes – way too small or tall and very thin. They were also shoddily made, the canvas not attached to the frames adequately. Moths flew out of the packaging protecting the frames and I could see that they had eaten through the fabric in areas.

I was very relieved to wake and welcome the actual courier who delivered four beautiful canvases this morning.