Ambling along a local nature trail
we came upon a wooden gate
leading to a small farm
the gate had a strut attached to a giant tree
and upon it were placed two tiny elephants
these weren’t the only man-made inhabitants of this location
there were stone foxes, ceramic ferrets, metal birds and butterflies, and a vibrant orange rat
but they’re the ones which stood out for me
because it seems that I have a thing for tiny elephants
I’d never noticed that about myself before
“What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I am essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous, not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slap-stick comedy, but rather in the sense of ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and the most extraordinary gestures. ”
― Gustave Flaubert
.
THE ICONOPHILE 
Me too. Also a surprise. Apparently I even collect them.
Want some??
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Haha! Ummm… awkward silence ensues.
I sort of do want them but why and wouldn’t that deprive you of them? 🙂
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Listen, I don’t want to contribute to some kind of delinquency or anything here, but I am in the downsizing time of my life. It has been a real challenge to let certain things go. My children and grandchildren and friends and even my clients have been inundated with my “family heirlooms” for a long time. And STILL, I have all these collections.
I would consider it an honor to pass on a couple of tiny elephants to you in gratitude for your wonderful and artistic addition to my blogging life!
Send me a mailing address at chosenperspectives@gmail.com. Want a piece of Cobalt glass to go with your bottles?
Don’t worry, I won’t send you a giant BUG!
Big cyber hugs!
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Thank you for the wonderful compliment, it is I who should be grateful to you for appreciating my quirky posts 🙂
And thank you very much for the offer, that’s incredibly generous. I thought you were joking before, so my reply wasn’t serious. My apologies for that. My serious answer is No Thank You.
I tend to mainly collect things in photographs, that way you can carry your collection around in your pocket. If you take a photo of everything you’re giving away, then if you regret having given it away or miss it, you will still have it in the photo. You could create an album with a story for each item, about how it came into your life, what it meant for you, and who you gave it to and why (it would make a great blog series). Your photos of your cobalt glass are gorgeous! and your passion for them makes them vividly alive.
I learned to downsize when I was in my late teens because my life became more peripatetic than usual. The goal was to fit everything I owned into a suitcase. The hardest collection to part with was books (it was also the heaviest and bulkiest to carry around and fit in a space), everything else seemed easy to let go compared to books, because they were like intimate friends. There’s a moment in downsizing when you step over a line between having and not having, and downsizing becomes addictive. You free up space in your life, you become lighter, freer, and new experiences fill the void left by what has been let go. Ultimately the most important collections in life are the ones which stay with you because they are within you – your memories, your stories, your thoughts, your emotions and feelings, and the love of all those who know you and whom you know. Having less turns into having more.
A book which helped me when I was learning to downsize was – To Have or To Be by Erich Fromm – I still have a copy of it (which is kind of funny since he advocates being rather than having. Life is humorous that way).
Best wishes for your challenge!
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Thanks for your long reply (and your straightforward “no thank you”. I’ll settle for posting about my collections. I have been photographing them all along but you have given me even more ideas.
I used to have a large sunny, two-sided corner window, filled with several feet of glass shelving on vintage glass bricks. This is where all my Cobalt glass lived for many years. Man, was it ever beautiful in the sunlight.
I had so many pieces that were precious gifts from people I loved. (You know how it is when you collect, everyone wants to give you that one item you don’t have) So I put a tiny white sticker on the very bottom of every poison bottle, vase, bowl, pitcher, etc. and I wrote the name of the person who gave it to me, in indelible ink so I could always remember.
Do you know it only takes about 3 months in the direct sunlight, even through deep blue glass, for any and all kinds of ink to completely fade, sun-bleached away forever???
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