Last time around, I looked at an old woman who was in a relationship with an old man. The old man now goes with, of course, another old man:
This one is sitting on a rocking chair, apparently asleep, and with an animal, probably a dog even though it has owl-like eyes, asleep on top of the book he holds open on his lap. He appears to have been sitting there asleep for some time, for he and his clothes and his chair all appear to be growing some sort of green mould.
So, now, what does the old man in the rocking chair go with? What else but this?
An old woman, also sitting in a rocker, also asleep, and with another animal asleep in her arms, this one probably a cat, although it has a tail more like a squirrel. Her mould is blue. I am suspecting that the mould is actually supposed to represent merely the colours of their housecoats; but in both cases it spreads creepily into their skin and hair, and thus creates something of a horror-movie effect, a kind of spreading plague–the dog and the cat are catching it, too. Both the old man and the old woman wear the stereotypical glasses that can be peered over the top of, and thus help the pair to represent a satisfactorily recognizable caricature of what it means to be old. Perhaps the plague is simply age itself, the process of growing into a mouldy oldie? So much for
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life for which the first was made.
That’s a quote from Robert Browning’s poem “Rabbi ben Ezra”–which, intriguingly, goes on to say:
But I need, now as then,Thee, God, who mouldest men.
While most of my salt and pepper shakers are made of some sort of earthenware, this pair is plastic. Their bottoms inform me that they were made in Hong Kong.
Next question: what goes with an woman in a chair?
Perry Nodelman 