Reflect

June 22, 2009

First, thank you for all the many responses to Erin's health insurance questionnaire (the link is at the left if you haven't taken the time yet). I have learned much and am learning more everyday. Please continue to share with your friends that I would like to hear their stories.

Now, on with what you come here for. . .

What would you conclude if you saw a bunny leaning up against the kayak parked on your deck?

Me too. I would assume she was a borderline delinquent, moments away from shoving the boat onto the lake and heading out for a joyride. She should appreciate that I turned her away from a life of crime that begins with boredom, and is quickly followed by the thought that "no one would really miss the boat if I took it for a spin around the lake." Left to its natural conclusion, the quick spin would have begat a chase scene worthy of a Bruce Willis movie and ultimately would have ended in Grand Theft Kayak charges.

She should also appreciate that I noticed her before Willie did.

In addition to having a bad bunny on the premises, I had a particularly bad bag of garbage that did me wrong, not once, but twice this weekend. I don't want to mislead you into thinking I chose "bad" because the bag had a similar, criminal personality as the bunny. It wasn't even "bad" in a nasty smelling or split-open-at-the seam way.

No, the bag of garbage was bad because it it caused me grief: first by distracting me on Friday night so that I didn't see the cat before Willie did. He caught me unaware, lunged for the cat, and ended up pulling me on my back across my mom's caliche driveway (NOTE: though either would be bad, do not confuse caliche with caliente). Luckily(?), only clothed body parts contacted the gravel, rendering my favorite cantelope-colored shirt hole-y (Holy?), but avoiding significant blood spilling. I subsequently managed to get the bag into the garbage lock up with the rest of the neighborhood garbage, only to have to go dumpster diving for it on Sunday morning in search of a Lowe's receipt that Walter needed. Very rarely does a bag of garbage bring so much to a relationship.

If you come here for light-hearted merriment, this is the point you should click the "back arrow" button on your screen.



You may or may not know The Treachery of Images, which is the painting pictured here.

You may or may not know its artist, Rene Magritte.

You may or may not read French (translation: This is not a pipe.)

Magritte was not purposefully obtuse. He wanted to make the point that his painting represents a pipe. No matter how real it looks, you can not stuff it and smoke it.

By the same token, Ceci n'est pas Erin et ceci n'est pas un avocado.

For me that is the most difficult hurdle to healing: the omnipresent realization that nothing I have, nothing I have saved, no remnant nor relic of Erin's life is Erin.

Given that unchangeable reality, I fall back on my only option: I find comfort in the essence of Erin and choose to appreciate what I had and still have rather than what I lost. This, my friends, is not like an afternoon in the park (either with Seurat or Carl).

Erin sent me a gift for her birthday. During the last fused glass workshop, she conspired with Jimmie Homburg and Janice Sahm to design a special fused-glass piece for me (I think as a mother's Day gift, but it didn't get done in time for that). This was something they could not fire in the "redneck" kiln in the church's microwave. It had to be taken to a real glass maker's shop a hundred miles from here. This photo doesn't do justice to its subtlety and beauty. It has texture that you can't see here and uses diachroic glass that gives it a particularly luminescent sheen. The way it's strung lets it hang exactly on top of my heart.