Sometimes it helps to ponder and remember. And share.
On the wall above my computer monitor at work there hangs a plate. It
is eight or nine inches across, and hand painted with an outdoor
scene. This plate was purchased by my mother in the late 1940's or
early 1950's when she was living at home and working. It hung in the
living room at my grandparents house, and then it was on the wall at
Grandma's assisted-living apartment. Mom put it up in her own room
after Grandma died. It came to me when we cleared out the house after
Dad died. A plate with a history. A momento.
It was a cheap piece when it was new, purchased at Wolworth's with a
little loose change. An emblem on the back says "hand painted" and
"Nippon". An anonymous artist. In my imagination the artist is a
Japanese war widow doing piece work. Peace and blessings to her over
the abyss of time.
A little green, some violet, some yellow ochre. Funny -- the way it
turned out, the colors on the plate are all colors Mom loved, colors
she looked good in. I have learned it's quite rare someone really
looks good in yellow. I had a yellow ****rt in 1974 -- made my face
look green. Mom looked good in yellow. We buried her in that yellow
dress that looked so good.
The scene on the plate is a river, wide in the foreground and
dwindling away behind some low hills in the distance. Some trees, a
suggestion of reeds and grass, the hills. Is the river flowing toward
me or away? Is that a rising or a setting sun behind the bluff? Is
the artist's vantage point from the bank, a pier, a boat?
Sometimes it is a boat. I am in the boat. Carried by a current
slowly into the scene, past that next bend in the river. Carried away
from cares and pains and endless details. Past the trees, beyond the
hills. To a place where that sunset becomes the dawning of a new
light. And in that place and by that light at last I can see those I
long to see.
[There is a picture of the plate (and some of the landscape near where
I live) on my Picasa site:
http://picasaweb.google.com/deltaechomike/Carquinez02
I don't have much of a camera, so you'll have to use your imagination.
Double-click to enlarge it. And please pardon the running related
tone of the captions.]
Peace,
--
Daniel ( deltaechomike@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
)
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