Tag: Magic

Pilgrimage

Rita Sommers-Flanagan8 Comments

Our final pilgrimage to my favorite Goodwill was a resounding success, but it was twinged with the usual autumn sadness. My father died in the fall when I was nineteen. For whatever reasons, I began shopping at thrift stores shortly after. Maybe I needed to prove I could take care of myself. Or maybe I wanted to give discarded items one last chance at usefulness. A selective resurrection.

Whatever the origins, it’s a spiritual practice now.

Time ceases to exist as Original Source and I sort through bins of castoffs and misfits, keeping in mind the needs and tastes of everyone we love. The possibilities are endless. Our cups and our carts runneth over.

Unpacking is less rewarding. Original Source abdicates as I face the flood of questions:

How did this get in my cart? What, dry-clean only? Why didn’t I check this zipper? Where’s the other boot? Will this really fit her? Oh, dear, are scarves out of style? Aren’t they still worn by Germans and movie stars?

Then, the recriminations:

You have too much stuff. Red is not your color. You’re a hoarder, a second-hand capitalist. You idiot, here’s the other boot, and they’re both for the left foot. Five aprons will not make you a better cook. There’s no room for more coats. And this candle stinks!

Next, the defenses:

You can’t have too much hand sanitizer, and red looks better with a little blue. That stain might come out. It’s hard to find a gold lamé shawl when you need one or Halloween pajamas, for that matter. Single boots make quirky, boho vases, and if the electricity goes out at night, you can locate that candle by smell alone.

Finally, action:

It’s all sorted. Little futures line the halls like wallflowers. I sidle up, dressed for any occasion, hoping Someone will ask me to dance. My imagination has a touch of arthritis, but I can still feign elegance and squeeze my feet into glass slippers.

Here’s the truth: Glass slippers offer no support whatsoever and shatter easily.

The sound of breaking glass attracts Cinderella’s attention. She glares from her repurposed throne, fanning herself.

“No worries,” I tell her. “I’ll glue the shards into a collage and call it Happily Ever After.”

Prince Charming and I bring in the last load of laundry.

“Warm for this time of year,” he says, mopping his brow with a silk bandana.

Cinderella sashays over in a chiffon gown, and Prince Charming tenderly takes her hand. Original Source takes mine, and the orchestra begins playing my grandmother’s favorite waltz. I have no idea how close we are to midnight, but I don’t care.

Planned Obsolescence

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

Did you know that if you push a straight edge up the outside of your apparently empty tube of toothpaste, at least a week’s worth will squish to the top? And if you cut the tube open and flay it, you’ll find even more of the goo clinging to the inside.

Labeling and packaging practices are fraught with waste, lack of imagination, and greed, often making it difficult to use up the entire contents of whatever it is you’ve purchased. And don’t get me started on single-use plastics, false recycling guarantees, and planned obsolescence.

Even well-intended containment is tricky. For instance, my own packaging has become increasingly prone to leaking, bruising, and breaking. My container has been taped up, repainted, and artificially preserved for a while now. Clearly, it’s not going to last until everything I have to offer is entirely used up.

As I struggle with this unpleasant reality, a primal protest grips me.

“Hey, Universe!” I yell. “When we age out, do our unused talents and potentialities end up in the Great Landfill of the Afterlife? Do you reabsorb our unwritten masterpieces? Our unsung songs? Hard-earned but unheeded advice? Unturned stones and dormant acts of kindness? How about the promises we meant to keep? Do you even have a plan for this obsolescence?”

God’s enormous head lifts from its heavenly repose in the sky beyond sky, and the Gaze comes to rest on the tiny speck that is our planet, that is my naked eye, that is a bioluminescent Whisper in the amniotic fluids covering the earth.

“You are not the sum of your talents, failures, passions, or fears,” the Whisper murmurs as the tide rolls in. “You’re the question, not the answer. You’re the journey, not the miles. You’re evolution’s hitchhiker, the plot of my favorite fantasy, and a transitory fraction in the equation you call eternity.”

This ethereal, evasive answer infuriates me. I want my untapped potential to guarantee longevity if not immortality. Like the spiritual toddler that I am, I throw my temporary container to the ground and beat my knobby fists against the pain of consciousness, empathy, imperfection, erosion, imagined glories, and old dogs.

The earth receives my rage and offers joy. Its undulating tenderness envelops me.

I roll onto my back and stare at the sky gathering itself into another night. The massive head of God explodes into trillions of stars, galaxies expanding, defying entropy and all attempts to limit or restrain.

Every boundary eventually gives way. Every horizon is a curvature forward. And we are all, together and forever, the trajectory of a certain hope and the substance of things not seen.

Found Art

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

Right now, I’m alone and hungry, and the relative silence I count on for creativity is hampered by the bathroom fan which is running because when I took our garbage down, I found a magnetic toothbrush haphazardly stuck to our dumpster and brought it home because it made me laugh, and I had some spray paint that would make it even funnier, so I took it out on the deck and sprayed it dark red, but the spray paint smelled toxic and it’s too cold to leave it outside to dry, so the toothbrush is drying in the bathroom: loud fan, thin door.

I’m going to leave myself hungry for a while because disruption and deprivation are rare for most of us and even small approximations are revealing. I have a chocolate bar at my elbow and granola a few feet away. I have Yo-Yo Ma ready to play on YouTube, and I’m fairly certain God would stop by for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. I have only to click, access, or ask. But I’m not going to. For this moment: No food. No silence. No God. No music.

Under my nose, my hands come together between paragraphs, and I realize that due to definitions, the No-God option is unavailable. Maybe this is a good thing. I breathe deeply and catch a whiff of that sharp smell escaping from the bathroom. I wonder if this is penance. I wonder if I need mercy.

I wonder if I could think more clearly if I had a bowl of granola. Mercies aren’t necessarily merciful, and God’s ever-presence is neither blessing nor curse. I wonder if I could spray paint God to increase visibility. I hear a chuckle. I wonder if I could make God hungry. I hear a groan.

“Fine,” I say to God. “You may as well materialize. Put your feet up.  Enjoy the view. Want some tea? Granola?”

God infuses the room diaphanous, translucent. Not hungry. Not visible. My hands elongate, my feet lose sensation, my vision expands, distorts, softens.

“No thanks,” God says, without making a sound.

“Then why are you here?” I ask, in an ungracious way.

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” God says, lifting a line from a recent detective show. “Besides, how do you know I’m here?”

I leave the unsteady room to check on the toothbrush. It’s dry. I wave it at God. “Seriously, what do you want? Why do you come by?” The toothbrush snaps itself to the refrigerator thanks to a magnet of considerable strength. But it’s kind of creepy sticking out there, deep red, reminiscent of bleeding gums. This won’t do. I need a gallery for found art and profound despair, and I need a cathedral where I can paint God into a corner. Both are unlikely.

I click, and Yo-Yo Ma begins to perform. I pour a bowl of granola and smile at God who has coalesced into a paintbrush dipped in turquoise. I’m working on a self-portrait. I’m not sure which colors to use, but for now, turquoise might be perfect.