When I was in graduate school in the 1980’s, I had the
opportunity to do an internship in an art museum in a mid-size southern city. I
started out as a curatorial assistant, and my first assignment was to learn how
to accession items into the museum’s collection. One of the donations I worked
on was several pieces of Fiestaware, an inexpensive Art Deco china introduced
by the Homer Laughlin China Company in 1936.
Fiestaware, characterized by bold solid color glazes and
curved shapes, was instantly a success when it was released in the midst of the
Great Depression. As I saw and handled it for the first time, I was struck by
the shapes and colors, and immediately felt why this bright, affordable
tableware must have appealed so greatly to so many in a dark time in our
history. Much like our ancestors who were drawn to this simple, accessible way
to brighten their homes in a time of want, I began to slowly purchase a few pieces
of Fiestaware, mostly at antique malls.
Over the years and through two marriages, I managed to put
together a fairly complete collection. I have packed and moved it probably a
dozen times, twice stored it in one of those places, and put most of it in the
same Hoosier cabinet wherever I am living at the moment. All this time, it has
managed to accrue in value.
I have of late been moving into a new place in my life,
where I am looking objectively at how I live. I am redefining my purpose, my
values, my lifestyle – and there have been profound shifts in what is important
to me. One of the most quantum changes has been in the values of what I am
connected to in a deep way. I have come to believe that the entire universe –
all of creation – is connected. The smallest, most seemingly insignificant
thing can ripple through time and space and have profound impacts and create
incomprehensible change.
I also believe that every moment of our lives is a choice.
We can go in several directions at any time, and it is how we choose to react
to people and circumstances and things that determine the next step on our
journey through life. There is not really an Us or a Them. There is only We.
The good news to me is that I get to determine the strength of each cord that
ties me to anyone or anything.
There are many things that I have chosen lately to free myself
of, by setting those things free. Some of them I have gladly tossed aside in an
instant, with the only emotional reaction being one of gladness and gratitude.
Others have been almost unbearably painful, and have required time, diligence,
acceptance and ritual to release. These things and people will always be a part
of me, and of the definition of who and what and where I am. Each of them has
taught me valuable things, made me happy and mournful, healed and wounded me,
and are precious gifts to me that will never be forgotten as I walk down my
path.
All cords are not all personal. We as a culture are tied to
old self images and discredited ideas and false, myopic ideas
about our collective past. We look to the sitcoms of the 1950’s and 60’s and,
as has now become our almost universal reaction, confuse entertainment with memory
and reality. No academic takes the philosophical ideas of Ayn Rand seriously,
and despite her loathing and ranting regarding Christianity or any sense of
societal empathy, she has become an ideological darling of the evangelical
right. I recently had a conversation with an addiction counselor that has come
to believe that the paranoia, the constant drumbeat of hatred and impending cultural
collapse, the sense that their imaginary idea of our nation is under assault by
“those people”, has become a real and serious pathology. We are so invested in
our self-perception as the City on the Hill, so married to the hubris of
American Exceptionalism, that we can’t see the where we as a nation have and continue
to far too often fail our own citizens and the planet as a whole.
A person or a people cannot free the bonds of what holds us
back without honestly opening our eyes and our minds to the reality within and
around us. You cannot see what you do not look at. Each of us owes it to ourselves
and our siblings of God to open our eyes and our souls to what is real, and
determine what nurtures us and harms us, and choose a path forward that leads
us individually and collectively to a better place. Our choices are our legacy.
The collection of Fiestaware I carefully amassed over the
years has brought me great joy, and in many ways the doing of it over a long
time is one of the greatest of those joys. It is time to let go, though, to
repurpose this resource to new things that have grown more important to me. I
am grateful for the happiness and experiences I amassed in collecting this
colorful and pleasing thing. If, however, I am to grow and move, I must set
these this thing free and hope it brings the same gladness to someone else it
gave me.
Good bye, Fiestaware, and thank you for not only what you
have given me, but for the next thing that you are helping make possible.
