It’s said that ‘stuff’ has no meaning. It’s people that really matter. Well, I don’t think that it’s strictly true.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, but I have a blue bowl that I love over most things. It’s lumpy, cracked and imperfect in almost every way. It’s the perfect sized bowl for me. If it were an item of clothing it would fit as if made to measure.
I bought it in the 90s at a car boot sale when I had a house and car boot sales were all the rage. My blue bowl cost me £2.
Clearly someone had made it in a pottery class. I can’t bear to think about how it ended up in the car boot sale pile. For me, there is no excuse that would be good enough for rejecting such a beautiful thing.
There’s something about the imperfections that comfort me; I can’t break it because it’s already broken.
I’ve used it for various things in the past but at the moment it sits empty.
When I broke up with Richard he was anxious that it should be reunited with me as soon as possible, along with the rest of my belongings. Perhaps he was just keen to make space in his flat.
It was the same with Chris. He couldn't find a bag big enough to cram in every trace of me. Even the little embroidered rainbow I brought for the Claire b’n’b was in there. I’d never been sad to see a rainbow before. Painful as this was though, I can't deny that unpacking that enormous bag of stuff was bittersweet. As you know, I love unpacking almost as much as packing.
So clearly exorcising another from one’s life by removing their belongings is meaningful. A symbol of an ending and a fresh beginning.
Another item that is meaningful to me is, funnily enough, another blue bowl. This one is much smaller and has blue lines against white on the inside. The set of three bowls were a gift to me from a friend, made by a talented artist. These bowls were not particularly meaningful until one broke - bounced off the shelf by some drilling on the other side of the wall.
It was completely shattered, in many pieces on the floor, but I’d been reading about the Japanese concept of kintsugi where pottery is glued back together, its cracks delicately painted over in gold. Rather than being discarded, an object becomes more treasured than ever, its defect becomes its strength, adding to its beauty.
So I asked Chris to help me fix it. As he fell upon the delicate pieces with glue, gold paint and gusto I wondered if there was a Japanese word for further flaws caused by the fixing itself. Instead of delicate trails of gold, there were gluey gold fingerprints everywhere, the pieces not so much placed together as thrown.
It was heartbreakingly funny and, because I loved him, I told him I loved my newly fixed bowl, which to be fair, I really did. Do. It now holds a little bar of soap.
So things are meaningful and important in various ways, even if the stories will one day be lost with their owners.
And whilst my beloved blue bowl is empty, waiting to be used once again, it reminds me of the saying about time by Arnold Bennett.
You cannot waste it in advance. The next year, day, hour are lying ready for you as perfect, unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misplaced a single moment in your life.
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