Artifactory

When I was in college, Religious Studies was the big deal discovery for me (not that, apparently, it did me much spiritual good for a long time ... but that's a certain kind of freshman for you). I loved Taoism, and hated to leave that unit behind for Buddhism. Buddhism's emphasis on eliminating tanha, the attachment to Things, made me feel guilty and ugly. I have always adored the sensation of emotional hunger - interpersonal; abstract ... concrete. I'm not replete with love of luxury, but I do believe in talismans.

As human as it is - I both understand cautioning humanity against indulging the Pathology of Stuff we obsess upon - and resist the idea that imbuing objects with meaning, with association, with emotional value is a sin. I don't want to substitute exchange rates for relationships, but I do believe that humanity's susceptbibility to and penchant for symbolism have much beauty going for them. I don't want to be called a sinner because the gifts my father gave me - especially Einstein, which was a bequest he thought about and made with the weight of knowing he was dying, are "things" and therefore beneath the spirituality of a human. The ring my mother let me have, which he gave to her ... the mask my brother carved, which is more than art to me ... the hair stick he made me ... the paintings of my nieces ... the bookshelf I built with dad ... the books that reside upon it.

These things are not vanities - even for a woman like me. They aren't the folly of someone with no sense of what is important. They are, so many of them, the very manifestations of what *is* important, what does matter. I don't hold them with greed - my attachment isn't twisted. Even my father's ashes - an artifact many in the world would find disturbing - are a reverent treasure for me, not just an example of the fact I cannot let go.

We're often exhorted to let go. To relieve ourselves of Things and Stuff. To value what is "real".

What is real is that my father knew I had grown up staring into the incredible thing that is negative space - the white, beneath the yellow and red paint that make up my Einstein - and knew my mind had gone myriad places, drawn something ineffable from that painting. What is real is the passionate and romantic love he bore my mother, which he expressed sometimes, in a way she loved, by giving her gold. What is real ... are books. Things that carry something. Meaning.


***


I have never loved someone and found that love was turned to hatred. I've only once ever loved that the feeling turned out to suffer mortality. Even for the person that can be said of, I still have respect and no thought of hatred.

I don't turn on those I bring to my heart, and for those I hurt, or been unworthy of as we all are from time to time, I offer what recompense I can.

When we are hurt, we become ungainly. We act at top speed, and clumsily. Sometimes, the instinct is to use a Thing as a weapon. TV court shows are littered with the spurned, suing for return of things, suing for recompense for possessions destroyed, demanding physical accounting, when emotional balances can't be met. "He owes me the price of those tires" ... "she didn't give me the ring back" ...

We're weak creatures. And things are talismans. Sometimes what starts a sinless gift becomes the avatar for pain.

I wonder where the line is. Where a venerated relic becomes the source of tanha, of greed. How long is the line from spiritual to venal ... and where is it the vain girl becomes the ugly woman, holding on to Things (and Stuff) for their sake ...