History of Bad Luck

I have a long history of bad luck with rings. I am sure there were a series of rings when I was a child that disappeared for a variety of reasons. When I was dating my kind and trusting future husband, he had given me a very attractive agate ring he had made with lights and contrasts in it that looked like a horizon line and a sunset. I left it on a public bathroom sink when I was washing my hands. There’s one down side of cleanliness. He should have taken a clue at that time, but alas, he didn’t. He gave me a lovely set of rings when we married which were washed down a kitchen drain after 3 years of marriage. It’s possible that I have become more responsible or maybe less clean.

Quite a few years ago, I lost a CTR ring in the dark recesses of a recliner chair, having taken it off and it slipped from my hands, jingling downward, never to be retrieved. I turned the chair up and down a bunch of times, to no avail. I heard it jingle once, never to jingle again. Alas, maybe my inability to choose the right is the reason I have lost so many rings.

The other day, I was beginning to wonder if dark forces were at work. Maybe the prophecy about the last days was occurring, about our possessions being illusive. I also wondered if we had a group of "Borrowers" living in the crawl space under our house. In August I bought a ring at the Petrified Forest which slides over the knuckle of my pinky finger, but which is quite loose. Several times I have thought as I have taken a shower, washed my hands or put on lotion that it could slip off too easily.

The other day, I was in the shower getting ready to wash my hair and I was paranoid about it slipping off my hand. So I opened the shower door and gently tossed it out onto the middle of the rug. A thought crossed my mind that I might never see that ring again, being somewhat and at times, very superstitious. A self-fulfilling prophecy could be aided by pixies or gremlins such as the one that lived in the recesses of the recliner and absconded with my CTR ring.

When I got out of the shower, I looked for the ring and sure enough it was nowhere in sight! I shook the rug twice, checked on both sides of the toilet and all along the sides of the walls. I was thinking about trajectory and propulsion and how such an object might bounce or roll, maybe out into the bedroom. I was more than puzzled since I am inclined to be superstitious about disappearing objects and UFO’s and crop circles, etc, etc. I went and got a broom and swept the floor, I thought well enough. I was so baffled, pondering the likelihood of gremlins and Borrowers and prophecies. I made one more perusal around the toilet, in back where there was not a chance that it could have made its way, but voilá! there it was. It had rolled about 3 feet, circling in back of the toilet, landing in a spot so out of sight that I would swear in court that a Borrower had come along hiding it so as to come back for it later. You will be relieved to know that there was a happy ending in my long history of ring incidents.

Puzzling Remnants

Buying the contents of a storage unit of a delinquent renter has got to be a hazardous gamble, thank you very much. The owner called me to say that there were a bunch of picture frames and art canvases in addition to boxes of assorted stuff/junk. The whole of it was under a thick layer of Holbrook dust so perusal of contents was not something that could be done in a short amount of time. The art equipment appeared to be more than the cost of the sale so I bit! It has been an interesting and intimate view of a perfect stranger and the list grows longer of what perhaps the stranger may be like. The man who has not been reachable by phone or mail is an artist with a web site if anyone is interested.

Besides an inherent artistic nature he seems to be a philosopher and seeker of the purpose of life as we all are. The boxes contained of books with a range of topics which include art history and aesthetics, a tattered Bible, books of a zen bent (whatever that might be) and the man's personal journals. There was a box labeled "Chinese artifacts" the contents of which is the first photo. It may be that some of the things are old and mildly valuable. The heavy piece of flowered knick-knack doesn't seem to fit into even miniscule-y valuable but who know? There are many examples of the man's talents in sketch books and sheets of his work in addition to the canvases with his art upon them. He seems to have leaned toward being a Cezanne type artist since many of them are a late Impressionist style of landscape and portraiture.

One box contained a really odd assortment of faces in a Cezanne-y style which could be mildly alluring to some unusual person. It's up for grabs if it grabs your fancy.
The journals have an obscurely themed flavor to them which is wordy and meandering. It makes me ponder on the kinds of impressions which might be left on display as others will be sorting through our leavings and our written items. Do all of us have our own ways of being philosophers and seekers of own purpose for our lives? If nothing else, it has been a bit sobering to sort through some puzzling remnants - like a Hollywood movie with a plot about someone who has died and is caught between dimensions and his ghost has to be set free. Do any rituals or rites come to mind to set the artist's spirit free? Okay, that's probably too crazy.