Superstition
I’ve got a lot of figurines. Stuff to which I’ve ascribed certain characteristics (but I do that to everything).
I bought this beautiful cloisonne owl in an antique shop in Montreal. Pretty cool place–the city and the store. I saw the owl and thought “how awesome. it’s black and red on one side, yellow and white on the other.”
My friend pointed out how pretty the black side was, how seemingly mysterious. And following her instinct, if not mine, I turned the thing on its black side and kept it there for well over one year and a half.
Every time I thought to change the sides, a voice in my head would tell me stop–as the exhibited side said daring success, excitement, piquancy…rrromance.
And in that year and a half, I had found all those things. So much so, I glutted myself on passion and existence and seemed unable to take more lest I burst.
So with the new year, the new decade, I came to a rapid decision. On a whim, I turned the owl ’round, watching the yellow grace my room for the first time. I breathed a sigh of relief or anticipation–perhaps even of fear (would this mean I had lost all that fun, the passion, the romance?) before realizing that that was silly. I had been the one to assign such ideals onto an object in the first place.
But an unsettling fog overtook me, and I found myself looking on the owl with new eyes. Ah, I said, it’s a new year, a new decade. Of course the yellow must now show. I must be on to different–greater?–things. Let them come. (May they be good.)