I begin with a story

I begin with a story on this dull, gray, rainy morning that now finally ushers in autumn. Only yesterday, summer bid us farewell with warm rays of sunshine; today, autumn greets us with rain. Later, the sun is supposed to come out. But later is not now. Now is gray. Now is rain.

I am reading a story about loss and memory, about flight and new beginnings, and the language of art. About creating in forms. Pottery. Storytelling. Poetry. Building in order to keep memories alive, to tie them to things. They stand in time, they remain, they walk paths with us that shape us, and later remind us of how it once was when it still was.

But things get lost, and with them sometimes the memory of something that once mattered. Or if something does remain, its meaning loses intensity, so entirely without them. All of this is called life: existing in time and gathering memories as they happen.

Before education comes collecting. The collecting of words, of stories, of ideas of others, of those who came before, of the vanished, and of those who were torn out of time forever. We also collect things that, if we allow it, grow dear to our hearts, that we cannot simply get rid of because they live with us and become a part of us.

Only when they are missing do we learn to appreciate them. Sometimes they are things as simple as a hat that you wear day after day for years and that is suddenly blown away by the wind. And sometimes the hat stands for something greater, something important and alive, that is no longer there or that seems to be slipping away from us right now.