My coffee table is home to three vessels.
One is a small glazed piece made by a woman named Beatrice Wood. When she passed away in 1998, she was 105. She was quite a famous artist and she made love to many artists even more famous than herself. My first husband was in love with Beatrice Wood, he was an artist too - but I never really felt he was that good. He gave me the Beatrice piece of art when I graduated from University. That husband was a cad, but Beatrice Wood was a remarkable artist, so I keep the lustrous ceramic in view for her sake, but not his.
The second vessel is even older than Beatrice Wood. It is from China and the glaze is the color of an alpine lake during run off, a milky green. It was a gift to Ken (my now husband) and I. It reminds me of the mountains we've climbed, the valleys we wandered through. Sometimes I get thirsty just looking at it. I keep it on the table for us - so that we can remember the wanting.
The third piece is a glass vase that we received as a wedding gift. A little girl named Paige dropped a rock into it and broke open the side, a hole just slightly bigger than her clenched fist. Oddly, that hole made the vase at least twice as beautiful as it was before. Sometimes I place little objects inside it. The hole acts as a frame for small treasures.
The mother of the girl who broke the vase was one of my oldest and dearest friends. She bought us another vase by the same artist, to replace the broken one, but it is not nearly as lovely as the first. You can't see inside the new vase. Its shell hasn't been split open by curiosity.
A year and a half ago this friend, let's call her Susan, sent me an email explaining that, in order to save her marriage and keep her family together, she could not see or speak to me again.
I asked, several times, for an explanation but got no reply.
I keep that vase on the table because it prompts Ken and I to wonder. We peek inside that broken vase, looking for clues. We pose questions, imagine why, then we move on to happier subjects.
As beautiful or tragic as it is, you can only spend so much time talking about a hole - and there are other vessels to discuss.
Half empty AND half full...
Kari
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” Winston Churchill
ReplyDeleteIf I kept anything on the coffee table it would get broken (more than just a hole) or lost in the bottom of a toddlers toybox which then it would most definitely get broken.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to be able to see inside the bottom of a broken vase.