THE ARENENBERG CHAIR

From a compendium of fifty-five short stories set on a spring veranda, at the beginning of a new, fresh, honest season with beloved friends, about subjects often not talked about, afraid to think about, but lovingly brought up to ease our wounded and trapped souls. The chair was just there, in Bremgarten, Luterbach, and Bützberg, beautifully carved and turned in a simple way from light wood. It always stood there silently as it moved from house to house through the generations. It was only when grand-aunt Gotti began, almost reverently, to tell us about its past that it became something alive, which the people who had long since disappeared into eternity left behind for us. Like a reminder that we are only a link in the chain of people who come out of the darkness and disappear again into the darkness without a word, for all eternity. It belongs to no one. It is only lent from generation to generation. And as long as a breath of love binds the people who are around it and treat it lovingly, it will live on long after we, too, have gone, to let people rest on its soft, cushioned and embroidered seat. May its gifted creator rest in peace wherever he is and whatever he has become in our universe whose energy is constant.

Now let it, the chair, tell of a time of wars and revolutions it has witnessed and lived through and of the people it has served through thick and thin, their joys and sorrows.THE ARENENBERG CHAIR