Reflecting
Jan. 27th, 2009 02:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ht_murrayWhen I was in 4-H, my little sister and I built a terrarium inside a fish bowl. It was mostly purple and green pepperomia, and some creeping ficus vine. And when it was finished, it looked like the little green places fireflies gather in at dusk. We got cute with it, put in some figurines of fairies sitting on mushrooms and some teeny plastic frogs. I think it got a blue ribbon at the fair. But it wasn't really about the ribbon. I remember that terrarium because I probably spent hours just staring into it, imagining what it would be like to live in there.
I grew up in Wisconsin, in the middle of the Great Horicon Marsh, most famous for pterodactly skeeters and Canadian geese. There was a rock down at the bottom of the hill behind the barn I used to lie down on at sunset. Even if the air got chilly, the rock stayed warm, and I could wait out there long after dark with just the bog grass and the cattails, spring peepers singing and wild cucumber blooming. If I waited long enough, the fireflies came out. I was never scared of anything sitting there, even though I knew the marsh was full of snakes and there was no way of seeing where my feet went when I decided to head back home.
I haven't felt like that in... almost twenty years, I guess.
I don't have that terrarium. I don't have any of the houseplants I had when I lived in Wisconsin. I live in a mobile home, and it's just not set up so there's good light for plants. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen fireflies since I've been in Texas. I can't even lie in the tall grass here. The fire ants would eat me alive, and the kinds of snakes we have in these parts should really not be tread upon lightly.
I don't think I have anything anymore that I've kept with me since I was fifteen and ran off into the marsh any chance I got.
When I met Dan, he had a painting on his wall of a mountain in Colorado, a little cabin next to a lake. He told me he used to stare at it for hours and imagine what it would be like to live there. I guess it's no wonder we're together, despite our differences.
Now, I spend so much time sitting here staring at this screen. I make pictures with my words, or at least I try, but they don't feel quite the same. I don't think I'll ever have that world, that safe place the way I had it back then. My eyes are different, ears... I don't even think I feel things the same way. The rock's probably hard, and the mosquitoes would probably drive me off before the fireflies ever got a chance to come out.
But I do have a happy place.
When Dan's mom died a couple years ago, we spent months cleaning out her house. She saved everything she'd ever owned. I have G.I. Joes her kids played with. The originals with the jointed arms and legs and army fatigues you could change out. Even the boxes. Most of it's junk. None of it's worth anything, no matter how adamant she was about keeping it. It's just clutter.
When my grandmother died, four thanksgivings ago, we cleaned out her whole apartment in a day. She didn't keep anything. She put not value on material things whatsoever. In fact, my sibs and I, particularly my brother, were pretty disappointed that we couldn't find not one thing that made us feel like we used to when we visited Grandma's house as kids. But I did take her robe, and for a good long time, it smelled like her, the way she always smelled no matter how many times she moved, how much junk she threw out to keep from having to pay for storage. And I got her purse, which is cheap and ugly and still has a newspaper clipping of her obituary tucked in a secret compartment inside. I usually don't take it out at all, but when I do, I feel like I'm going to Grandma's house, because it's bound to be something special if I feel the need to drag a purse.
I don't think I have a point in all this. I'm sure there was one. I was going to post pictures of the shadow box I found collecting dust in my mother-in-law's bedroom and talk about how I stare into it and still feel like I did back when I sat on that rock in the fading daylight or imagined living in that terrarium under the swooping purple pepperomia leaves, with the fireflies and teeny tiny frogs. I was going to post pictures because, the shadow box I stare into for hours these days is nothing at all like that terrarium or that marsh. It's not that cabin in the Rockies, or my grandma's robe. It's where I go when I pick up my purse and just climb out from under all that, imagine somewhere I've never been.
The point is, nothing is static. We all know that. Every now and again something swoops in and breaks the glass in the fish bowl. The marsh burns. Flowers die. But whatever we got out of them while they were here, we find someplace else. Some other incarnation. Some other color tinting the memory. It doesn't matter what you believe in-- life, death, old, new, truth or myth-- it never ends. Not ever.
And take that as what you like. I don't even know how I got there from spending the last three hours putzing in Photoshop. I guess I just felt like reflecting.
I grew up in Wisconsin, in the middle of the Great Horicon Marsh, most famous for pterodactly skeeters and Canadian geese. There was a rock down at the bottom of the hill behind the barn I used to lie down on at sunset. Even if the air got chilly, the rock stayed warm, and I could wait out there long after dark with just the bog grass and the cattails, spring peepers singing and wild cucumber blooming. If I waited long enough, the fireflies came out. I was never scared of anything sitting there, even though I knew the marsh was full of snakes and there was no way of seeing where my feet went when I decided to head back home.
I haven't felt like that in... almost twenty years, I guess.
I don't have that terrarium. I don't have any of the houseplants I had when I lived in Wisconsin. I live in a mobile home, and it's just not set up so there's good light for plants. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen fireflies since I've been in Texas. I can't even lie in the tall grass here. The fire ants would eat me alive, and the kinds of snakes we have in these parts should really not be tread upon lightly.
I don't think I have anything anymore that I've kept with me since I was fifteen and ran off into the marsh any chance I got.
When I met Dan, he had a painting on his wall of a mountain in Colorado, a little cabin next to a lake. He told me he used to stare at it for hours and imagine what it would be like to live there. I guess it's no wonder we're together, despite our differences.
Now, I spend so much time sitting here staring at this screen. I make pictures with my words, or at least I try, but they don't feel quite the same. I don't think I'll ever have that world, that safe place the way I had it back then. My eyes are different, ears... I don't even think I feel things the same way. The rock's probably hard, and the mosquitoes would probably drive me off before the fireflies ever got a chance to come out.
But I do have a happy place.
When Dan's mom died a couple years ago, we spent months cleaning out her house. She saved everything she'd ever owned. I have G.I. Joes her kids played with. The originals with the jointed arms and legs and army fatigues you could change out. Even the boxes. Most of it's junk. None of it's worth anything, no matter how adamant she was about keeping it. It's just clutter.
When my grandmother died, four thanksgivings ago, we cleaned out her whole apartment in a day. She didn't keep anything. She put not value on material things whatsoever. In fact, my sibs and I, particularly my brother, were pretty disappointed that we couldn't find not one thing that made us feel like we used to when we visited Grandma's house as kids. But I did take her robe, and for a good long time, it smelled like her, the way she always smelled no matter how many times she moved, how much junk she threw out to keep from having to pay for storage. And I got her purse, which is cheap and ugly and still has a newspaper clipping of her obituary tucked in a secret compartment inside. I usually don't take it out at all, but when I do, I feel like I'm going to Grandma's house, because it's bound to be something special if I feel the need to drag a purse.
I don't think I have a point in all this. I'm sure there was one. I was going to post pictures of the shadow box I found collecting dust in my mother-in-law's bedroom and talk about how I stare into it and still feel like I did back when I sat on that rock in the fading daylight or imagined living in that terrarium under the swooping purple pepperomia leaves, with the fireflies and teeny tiny frogs. I was going to post pictures because, the shadow box I stare into for hours these days is nothing at all like that terrarium or that marsh. It's not that cabin in the Rockies, or my grandma's robe. It's where I go when I pick up my purse and just climb out from under all that, imagine somewhere I've never been.
The point is, nothing is static. We all know that. Every now and again something swoops in and breaks the glass in the fish bowl. The marsh burns. Flowers die. But whatever we got out of them while they were here, we find someplace else. Some other incarnation. Some other color tinting the memory. It doesn't matter what you believe in-- life, death, old, new, truth or myth-- it never ends. Not ever.
And take that as what you like. I don't even know how I got there from spending the last three hours putzing in Photoshop. I guess I just felt like reflecting.
