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When your sights are on infinity, you don't fire blanks
This is a catalogue of talismans: the shrines we build without thinking about them. I didn't sleep much last night, so I started thinking about mine.
These are the things that would travel with me wherever I went. The three-hundred-year-old onion bottle. A netted fishing float, newer and much the same salt-green. A butter-colored fragment of Baltic amber. An eleke of seven colors. The sundial ring and the moonstone pendant I wear daily. The obsolete fifty-franc note in my wallet. A newsboy's brown corduroy cap from the 1960's. The blue-eyed, gold-satin fire lizard I sewed and stuffed in ninth grade. A metal silhouette of Kokopelli from New Mexico. A green-and-gold glass dragon with a melting ice cream cone. A two-thousand-year-old chunk of concrete and white tesserae. The eleventh card from a tarot of goddesses, Oya, the whirlwind, Strength. The mezuzah that was made for me when I was twelve years old. A pair of earrings, cat-headed mermaids. The necklace by Elise Matthiesen, "Remember What You Say in Dreams." A framed print of John William Waterhouse's A Mermaid. Another of Michael Parkes' The Creation. A photograph of the Sibyl's Cave at Cumae, taken by a friend of mine in college. One of a pair of candlesticks, dark blue and dark green. Whenever I moved, I would know which boxes they were in. I would pack them carefully and unpack them first.
And so many of my talismans are books—plays, verse, novels, scholarship—but for now I am leaving them out, because even a short list would run on to lunacy. The same with music and lately with DVDs, as though you can hold on to stories like coins or shells. One year in high school, I carried the same book everywhere with me, in my backpack to and from classes, in my hand when I went out with friends, a little red-spined Modern Library edition with black-edged pages and I still know which shelf it's on.
What do you hold on to?
These are the things that would travel with me wherever I went. The three-hundred-year-old onion bottle. A netted fishing float, newer and much the same salt-green. A butter-colored fragment of Baltic amber. An eleke of seven colors. The sundial ring and the moonstone pendant I wear daily. The obsolete fifty-franc note in my wallet. A newsboy's brown corduroy cap from the 1960's. The blue-eyed, gold-satin fire lizard I sewed and stuffed in ninth grade. A metal silhouette of Kokopelli from New Mexico. A green-and-gold glass dragon with a melting ice cream cone. A two-thousand-year-old chunk of concrete and white tesserae. The eleventh card from a tarot of goddesses, Oya, the whirlwind, Strength. The mezuzah that was made for me when I was twelve years old. A pair of earrings, cat-headed mermaids. The necklace by Elise Matthiesen, "Remember What You Say in Dreams." A framed print of John William Waterhouse's A Mermaid. Another of Michael Parkes' The Creation. A photograph of the Sibyl's Cave at Cumae, taken by a friend of mine in college. One of a pair of candlesticks, dark blue and dark green. Whenever I moved, I would know which boxes they were in. I would pack them carefully and unpack them first.
And so many of my talismans are books—plays, verse, novels, scholarship—but for now I am leaving them out, because even a short list would run on to lunacy. The same with music and lately with DVDs, as though you can hold on to stories like coins or shells. One year in high school, I carried the same book everywhere with me, in my backpack to and from classes, in my hand when I went out with friends, a little red-spined Modern Library edition with black-edged pages and I still know which shelf it's on.
What do you hold on to?
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Since so much of my life is in storage, it is difficult to remember beyond certain books, cds and movies I always keep with me.
I know that once I begin unboxing my life again, the chunk of pale blue glass fished out of the creek in WV will go into a window-sill. The box filled with dried roses, dead butterfly wings and childhood jewelry will go on the counter top, and my grandmother's tatted handkerchiefs will be washed and ironed.
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I love your list of talismans. Yes, I'm thinking about mine now. I'll have to think more because the first thing I thought of was my Jesus and Mary Chain concert sticker, my Lake Superior stones, and my Lord of the Rings volume, but there are things on my dresser and nightstand that I've had a long time. You've got me thinking ...
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What book is this?
What do you hold on to?
There's no way my things could hold a candle to your things (especially not your candles, heheh *cough*). My attempts to hold stories like coins or shells has seen my DVD collection outstrip my coin and shell collections by about 300%. In fact, the only shells I have are a few that somehow turned up in one of my old backpacks, and I think they've been crushed for all the tossing about my backpacks have seen. As for coins, I think I have a few plastic-with-silver-paint coins that came with some of my old Star Wars figures.
Ah, I am the species of nerd that collects action figures. I suppose the jewel of my collection right now is a hard to find Edea (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Edea_Kramer) action figure from Final Fantasy VIII. I had a great Odin (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Odin) figure with horse from the same game (Odin has never looked better), but he got lost at somehow. I still have a Siren (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Siren_%28summon%29) action figure from the same game, and it remains the only action figure at one time available on regular store shelves to have pubic hair, at least that I've seen.
I used to glue together and paint plastic models of ships from Star Wars and Star Trek. I had a lot of them and was very proud of most of them, especially my Millennium Falcon and Enterprise-A, whose warp nacelles were bastards to glue. Unfortunately, I had to throw them all away when my mother kicked me out of the house, and the only one I kept was a model of the Enterprise-D (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Enterprise_%28NCC-1701-D%29), which I keep as safe as I can.
Otherwise . . . hmm. I have a small metal statue of some wizards and goblins that a girl gave to me as part of a scheme of hers to get me to fight another guy over her (didn't work). I've managed not to lose the tiny plastic salamander that came with Tori Amos' Scarlet's Walk--maybe I oughta be more disturbed than I am that her albums are beginning to resemble McDonalds kids' meals. I have my old fedora, although my first fedora is long lost. I have a samurai sword with wakizashi and tanto. I have a mug that's essentially a painted sculpture of Chewbacca's head with a hole in the top. I've had it since I was a little kid. There's a porcelain mermaid at my mother's house that was one of my prized possessions as a kid, but I don't keep it with me, so maybe it doesn't count . . .
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Sylfie
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Oh, and if you don't mind me asking, what's an eleke? I'd never seen that term before.
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My books, unless it's sell or starve. My music. (And now my computer, since that's where my music lives.) Used to be my writing would be on this list, but, well, there was a donkey move six weeks ago that caused it all to float away in the virtual breeze. So, maybe in a few years, I'll be able to say it again.
...that's pretty much it. The times I lived out of my car, my computer, my hanging file, and as many boxes of books as would fit were what I had with me.
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What, for that matter, is a mezuzah?
(I'm sure I could Wikisearch it, but your explanation will be more amusing).
PS have fun at the 'Con!
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