ONCE UPON A FUTON

I see these ads on western websites for thick, heavy and expensive bioengineered mattresses atop thick, heavy and expensive bioengineered boxsprings and my mind does the same thing it does when I think of central heating: Waitaminute! You've got it backwards! You don't want to heat the house, you want to heat the occupant! But in the case of mattress/boxspring (and frame to support them) it's: You don't want to coddle the body, you want to strengthen the body! To say nothing of the pocketbook.

I suppose it's because of my lifelong hiking, camping and lengthier travels that I came to prefer a couple of blankets on the floor to a western style bed. Now that I'm older, although I do have a bed to keep me off the floor so I can be warmer, the bed is more like a hard wood pallet topped with only a thin cotton futon, just thick enough to afford a shallow "hip-hole." Then on sunny days I just lay the futon over the deck railing to air out.

When I visit the States, I always wind up sinking variously into the mattresses and have to re-establish my posture each morning, a process that gets creakier and takes longer as time goes by. For me, at least, time goes by much more naturally on a futon.