Linen Table Napkins

Linen Table Napkins

She made the curtains out of linen table napkins - bright orange ones with hideous machine embroidered swirls of cheap brown and white thread. When the morning sun glares through the garish fabric, it casts the whole room in a fiery amber glow. It certainly isn’t a conventional décor approach but it has its own ambiance, its own character, and it fits with the part of her that dares not stand in front of windows herself. In a world where she must squeeze into a disjointed set of imposed expectations, she drapes her windows in a silent rebellion.

Rebellion is always silent. True rebellion, that is. It creeps with a stealthy determination, like red wine spilled across a white floor. It stains deeply and permanently, faded at times perhaps, but always there at the edge of awareness, like a table napkin draped across the knee. Linen table napkins are the heart of pinched conventionality, pretending to offer the user with a discreet means of wiping away the soil of a basic human instinct, but then mockingly broadcasting the masked crudeness of its user in the tight weave of its cloth. They aren’t disposable. They must be laundered, leaving the guests at the table reluctant to use them for their advertised purpose. Instead they serve as silent slave masters, looming traps that subtly cajole each guest to carefully repress any real human expression. They are better used for curtains, where they are laid bare against the raw willfulness of sunlight burning through the plate glass boundary.

Rebellion is also orange. It is bold and unobtrusively explosive. Without motion or voice, it exerts a pervasive presence just by its luster. Orange is the only colour that feeds the eyes, that sweet or bitter, extrudes upon all the senses and burns into the back of the eyelids long after darkness hides it from view. It defies convention because it dares to be brassy in a sickeningly polite and false spectrum of colours. It rails at attempts to make it fit quietly into an emasculated palette of well-behaved hues. It stands alone without apology or diffidence, being what it is, regardless of the opinions for or against it. It serves the linen table napkins right to be orange, because they need some lessons in humility.