A table is a piece of furniture made from a flat surface, which is based on legs or a pallet. This is roughly the definition of this simple construction that you will find in dictionaries of different times and languages. Since Ancient Egypt, table is a surface above the ground, which is used for various everyday functions.

However, if you look at this piece of furniture from a semiotic perspective, you could say that a table is one of the rare things accompanying us throughout the time we have on Earth. A person is born on a table, unless one of the most wonderful functions of a woman’s body is broken by a modern whim or an unfortunate coincidence. Following the Baltic burial traditions, there is an empty chair at the funeral table for the ‘thank-god-not-present’ deceased. A person eats, studies, works and sometimes even sleeps at the table. It is also the place where people look into each other, celebrate weddings and make up fights. A table is where human history is made. It’s the beginning of wars that end with peace treaties.
But existence takes a whole new form underneath the table. And if you put a blanket, a sheet or something similar over it, time begins to go backwards and the table turns into a house of blanket. It is the only place where you can hide from the inevitability of the table. And if you manage to get yourself a crumbled biscuit, a warm cup of sweet cocoa and a friend, who might be the future Brussels clerk never greeting you again, then our little fears of what is happening out in the real world attain a charmingly naive taste.

Andris Kalnozols