a box of stories waiting to be told

i came across an amazing item that sold on a sotheby's auction back in may. it's a 19th century box containing a collection of objects pertaining to the occult and witchcraft. i say "came across," but it's because i subscribe to an esoteric little substack called dearest. and monica, who writes the substack finds the most fascinating stories, mostly about jewelry, but also about interesting items like this. 

whenever i see something like this, i think of all the stories it could tell if you could only listen to it just right. it sold for just over £20,000. a bit steep for a box of whispered stories. i would really love to open it up and examine all the items. it was probably worth the price.

on links and hands and the strange ways of grief

it seems that email newsletters are the new blogs and i found myself subscribing to edith zimmerman's drawing links some months ago after reading about it in the reply all newsletter (which is another very good one). anyway, edith (who seems to be much younger and more millennial than her name sounds) draws much of the newsletter as simple cartoon panels and they are very navel gazing and even a bit mundane, just as good old blogging was. maybe that's why i like it so much. as the name implies, she also always has some links to interesting things - book reviews, other newsletters, just generally interesting writing out there on the web.

without her, i probably wouldn't have found this thoughtful piece from the school of life on hands and the virtues of studying them closely. and of course, that made me think about my mom's hands (pictured here in a photo i've posted before). i can picture them on the steering wheel of the old blue stationwagon, air typing whatever thoughts flitted through her mind, or perhaps what the announcer was saying on the radio. i find myself doing that as well. her hands did so many things - repairs in the barn, a fancy hanging macrame table with glass top and fiery orange ceramic beads that i recall her making back in the 70s. i wish i had that table now, or at least the beads so i could recreate it, i wonder what ever happened to it? she buckled halters and harnesses on horses. she gripped the handlebars of her vast collection of bikes and rode them on long treks. in her later years, her hands became wrinkled and diminished, but i think they were actually still deceptively strong and capable, even as her mind grew weak and incapable. perhaps the piece is right that, "we might go so far as to say that if what we can colloquially call ‘the soul’ – that confluence of deep identity, vulnerability and singularity dwells anywhere, then it must be in the hands."  

my grief over the loss of my mother feels like a strange thing. i still haven't cried about it, i think because it was such a relief in some ways - the mother i knew was long gone for some time, but it comes to me in odd moments. the other day, a little shed that was housing some chairs and other things from the garden collapsed in the storm winds we had. i'd been feeding some of the wild kitties inside of a birdhouse sabin built in her woodworking class in the 6th grade that was standing under the shed. i poured the food into a little pink kitty bowl that was one of many that my mother bought at some point in a dollar store and which i brought home with molly, when i brought her back to denmark in 2012. the storm was raging with near-hurricane force winds and lashings of rain, but i suddenly panicked that both the bird house and that little pink bowl had been smashed. the dismay i felt at losing this stupid item, but which my mother had bought, was one of the strongest pangs of grief i'd felt so far. the thought that it was smashed and gone hit me hard, bringing home to me that my mother is also gone and i was despondent at the thought of losing this strange, small connection to her. so i donned my wellies and a coat and rushed out there to see if i could find the bowl and the bird house in the rubble. and it turned out that they were both fine - the bird house was knocked off its pole, but otherwise fine and the bowl flew into the grass, but was completely intact and not even chipped. relief flooded through me and i was almost embarrassed by how upset i'd been at the thought of losing that silly, cheap bowl. i had also been worried about the bird house, but knew that husband could fix that if it was broken. but the bowl could have been beyond repair. i've brought it in the house now and washed it and put it up in the cupboard where it's safe, a small piece of my mother, still intact.

gathered

skimming some or other feed, a headline about small household shrines caught my eye. i didn't click on the article and naturally, i have no idea where it may have been posted and i can't find it again. but that didn't stop me from pondering the growing pile of small, mostly natural, found treasures that has gathered on the window ledge in terms of whether they constitute a shrine. it does feel somehow like a shrine of sorts, gathered there over time. but a shrine to what? nature? walks? found objects? the passing of time? that little pear was perfect and green when i found it and now it's dry and wrinkled, but somehow more charming, even if it is now a mummy of a pear. i'm glad it dried up and that it didn't rot.

it's not all found objects, unless you count seeing something in your facebook feed and ordering it from etsy as finding, which i did with the heart by kim from numinosity beads. but even the little bottle is a found object, which i found one day out in the yard when i was emptying the litterbox. it does make me wonder what other treasures are lurking out there.

that little egg, which i found late last summer has also dried instead of rotted (thankfully) and is light and hollow now, as the inside has dried up. i'm pleased the cats have left it alone so it could do that. what is our human desire to gather things and keep them? why are we somehow driven (some of us more than others) on an almost unconscious level to gather and keep. stones, bits of moss, driftwood, shells, feathers. they constantly find their way into my pockets.

for me, there is pleasure in the arranging and rearranging and the photographing. it gives me a small moment of beauty and creativity in the midst of a busy everyday. and i guess that's shrine enough for me.

happy weekend, one and all.

as long as someone remembers

i'm reading orhan pamuk's museum of innocence, which is one long pondering as to whether objects can house memory and feelings. in the book füsun says "when we lose people we love, we should never disturb their souls, whether living or dead. instead, we should find consolation in an object that reminds you of them..." my visit to the flea market on saturday rendered a new little collection of objects which feel somehow laden with more or less inaccessible memories, reminders of stories not my own. and yet, i am still drawn to these things.

this old typewriter was there the last time i went to the market, so you might say we already have a history together, or at least that we'd met before. i didn't intend to buy it, but as i was leaving, the guy said 100 kroner and so i went for it. mostly because it still had a little poem in it that must be the last thing that was typed with it.

it's a sweet little poem about a little frog by chief doctor morten scheibel from the hospital in viborg. somehow, such a remnant there in the carriage of the typewriter does give a little bit of access to the stories and the memories it silently holds.

he experimented with the lines...using no spaces initially, then reverting to normal spacing. there's even a word he struck out and changed, offering glimpses of his creative process, left behind in the typewriter. tho' there was a more fetching typewriter there at another stand (and another price), this little poem made this one more appealing.

this camera may have similar secrets to tell, as there's a film still in it and it's on photo #14. it'll need a new battery before i can find out what memories it holds within. and discovering the battery thing makes me think that the other practica i got at a flea market a month or so ago might be ok after all if i just replace the battery.

stoneware plates and bowls keep their secrets more closely guarded. the azur nissen denmark plate is crazed and has a hairline crack, belying tales of long and not always gentle use. i loved the color and the amusing chat i had with the rather crotchety woman who sold it, so already i have laid a thin layer of my own memories onto it. the little bowl is a bit more silent, speaking only through the HAK initials on the bottom, as being a descendent of a long tradition of pottery-making in denmark. i loved the soft colors and the shape and size of it.

this little flat bowl/tray is HAK as well. the simple flower motif reminds me of the flower people sabin drew when she was little, so already i begin to layer my own meaning onto the object. it makes me a little bit sad to think that it found its way to the flea market. it must have once been a present to someone, thoughtfully given and once that person was gone and the story with it, it was packed up and sent off to the flea market. objects only retain their meaning as long as someone remembers.