My beloved needed a new battery for one of her wristwatches, and so I accompanied her to the nearest watch repairman. As it happened, I was stunned by the doormat in front of the shop’s door: it looked like one of no-bullshit Mondrians I painted many years ago (“No-Bullshit Mondrians,” August 19, 1998). It was beige with a simple composition of stark black lines. Having waited for my beloved to explain what she needed, I turned to the fellow behind the counter: “Where in the world did you get your doormat?” “Oh,” he smiled politely, “I got it at Ikea a few years ago!” “Amazing,” I shook my head, “it looks exactly like some of my paintings.” I did my best not to mention cave art, entoptic forms, trance, shamanism, and the like. “Look,” I pointed at the doormat to my beloved on our way out of the shop, “this is the Kandinsky that started me going with one more field across the top.” She just squeezed my hand. “We’ll go to Ikea one day soon,” she assured me. We will, indeed. Chances are there is more than one doormat of this ilk to be found there.

Addendum (August 28, 2014)

In search of the magical doormats, I just went through two Ikea catalogues that my beloved happens to have in her apartment. One is from Graz in Austria, and the other is from the Croatian capital, where the intrepid company has recently opened an outlet. If the media are to be trusted, it is doing pretty well. Sadly, though, not a single doormat is to be found in either of the catalogues. Too cheap an item, I suppose. Disappointed, I could not but notice many catalogue features that stretch between the two neighboring countries. First, many people on display on the colorful pages are African and Asian. As neither Austrians nor Croats are eager to see such people in their midst, Ikea’s cosmopolitanism cannot but irk many a customer in these parts. On top of that, the catalogues carry many a thought by so-called development engineers from across the European sub-continent. Some of them muse about Ikea’s clever design while others dabble in issues of sustainability. One of the development engineers goes as far as to claim that sustainability is no longer a technical question but an ethical one, instead. The engineers have it, that is. Now it is up to the silly customer. Irked by the gibberish, I tossed the two catalogues away from me. The doormats can wait, to be sure. Besides, no-bullshit Mondrians are in our genes. They will be popping up left and right as long as humans are around and about.