Matter

The gas heater is making its hard little *pings*, a reassuring sound that lets me know it's throwing heat and the pilot hasn't mysteriously put itself out again. As I look in that direction, the new-old rose colored chair from Goodwill dominates my line of vision, set against the golden-ish wall. Resting atop the chair, and leaning against the wall is a picture, a striking but quiet image of a lone horse facing a tree, its head bowed down, a sweep of branches forming a delicate canopy above him. It's a reproduction of an old Chinese painting, I think. Could be Japanese, too, I suppose. It's almost monochromatic save for the horse and tree trunk.

I was thinking about the anchoring power of objects and images, and so I mention this picture, that has been such an object for me, and happens to be sitting before me like a muse. The friend that I went to visit this weekend down in Brooklyn happens to live in a house that is filled with such items, at least it appears that way to an outside observer. The house has been in his family for three generations, and when he bought it from family, it came stocked with a dizzying array of...well, stuff. He has made it his own in his own way, but has left much of what existed intact, with intention, I believe. It makes for creating an environment that you kinda just want to settle down in and do some sippin' and smokin'.

Whether or not it was due to the anchoring power of the objects within, we barely left the house this weekend, and that was perfectly alright with me. Italian take-out from New Corner, Pad Thai from Blue Ginger, lots of vodka drinks, a few borrowed drags of nicotine for me, other nice smoky things I abstained from bc of my new job, a lot of sleeping and just plain chillin' out. Even the Chinatown bus was extra kind, I had two whole seats to myself on the way back.

But objects, anchors, those things we touch and see. This weekend as I watched footage of a firestorm out west, a woman was interviewed whose house, along with her mother's, was overtaken and consumed in minutes. You could almost see the heat on her skin as her dry blond hair whipped across her face. Everything was gone, everything had disappeared, photographs and letters. I thought about the strangeness of losing those sorts of records, relatively new types of records as life on earth goes, but quite taken for granted. What would it be like to lose all record of your life, with the exception of your life itself, your physical presence? Imagine proving who you are. At that moment I imagine what would constitute the shape of, the proof of, the meaning of your life would be the people who are part of it. I imagine it would come down to that.

I often find myself torn, when it comes to the material presence and proof of life, between a sort of charged sentimentality and an austere indifference. Leaning towards the former more so than the latter. The austerity is simply a response to feeling overwhelmed by a thing's power. Mostly I find myself sitting in the middle of the two, smack dab in the middle of it, cradled and carried and bemused as I cast a backward then a forward glance, aware that matter matters but that our understanding of matter is quite incomplete. But I guess that gives us something to do. And on that note... it's time to tidy up.