When we moved, I put one large terra cotta clay pot in another, packed them away and moved to our new home. Later while unpacking I tried to pull them apart and found they were stuck together. They were good sized pots so I decided I would break and sacrifice the inside one. I got a hammer and took a whack at it. It fractured into a jigsaw of shards.
I looked at the pieces and thought I could put it back together and use it. I got some glue and started with the big pieces first to smaller pieces last.
It felt I had really done something. Proud.
Things get broken. Most of the time I just live with the broken pieces agonizing over my loss. Granted, I could have driven to Home Depot and bought a new one if they hadn’t sold out of all of them because of people getting outside celebrating their vaccines.
I could have forgotten about the pile of clay pieces and begun any one of a hundred things I needed to be doing. Instead, I went about reassembling the Dead Sea scroll on my porch.
I like fixing things. I have tried fixing people but that doesn’t work as easily. It’s like the question “how may psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?” One. But the lightbulb has to want to change.
Attitude is important.
While walking with Kristi this morning I picked up and moved four earthworms across the street into the grass. I think one was dead but the other three; I imagine they were grateful for some unknown something. I was that something.
In a society that says “throw it away and buy a new one” developing an attitude of repair could possibly make its way up the ladder to our more overwhelming problems. Small to big.
Today’s word is Kintsugi.
- Wyatt
I’d like to know if Humpty Dumpty is for Sale ?
A pot glued together sticks together.
Clay puzzles where form following function
will hold another summer of blooms in it!
Remembered long after such artistic repairs
is the ring of Humpty Dumpty together again.
Wyatt, you are amazing.