January 3, 2008
(at the Minneapolis Institute of Art with Ron & Emilie)
It was an hour or so before closing time and we were higher than gods when we walked past the front desk and up the stairs, into a Tibetean gallery of the MIA’s Asian Arts exhibition.
After looking over a few scroll painting deals, I found myself examining various ornate metal objects in a case. My eye was drawn to the descriptive tag for a rather nondescript ancient container – the word “reliquary” leaping out at me. It’s hard to explain the reasons, but I felt very attracted to the word. The tag explained that ancient paintings often showed such containers at the foot of shrines’ Buddha images.
Ron was behind me and over a ways – I called him over.
“Reliquary!” I laughed, feeling he would understand my attraction to the concept – after all, wasn’t my whole house a reliquary of reliquaries, somehow? My thoughts were not rationally explicit, but I felt a deep connection to the concept that I thought would be obvious to others – especially Ron, who had lived in my house and was an active practitioner of various magicks.
“What?” Ron didn’t get what the hell I was trying to convey.
“A reliquary – for relics!”
“Huh?”
“For God Stones!” I exclaimed.
His face made it perfectly clear I was only confusing him even more – and then I realized that even I had no idea what I was talking about. So I opted to read to him from the tag. which didn’t help much either, since it didn’t say anything about either stones or gods – just ‘precious objects’ and saints.
“Hmmm, so I guess it’s not for stones – but you know that’s what I’d put in one!”
(Note: I have a thing with rocks.)
I still found it interesting, and loved the word, which I repeated to myself several times in an effort to remember. Reliquary. Reliquary. Reliquary. I even pulled out my cellphone to text message the word to Mandelbrot, but then didn’t, knowing I would now be able to remember the word without help … although I had no idea why it mattered to me.
A couple of hours later, we had moved through various other culture’s ancient arts, and were back in the Asian section – now in the Japanese gallery.
A small object in its own case drew my eye from a distance – when I came to check it out, I saw it was an ornate metal container with a crystal orb in the middle, filled with an assortment of small polished rocks.
The tag labeled it as a Reliquary – and then went on to explain that in ancient Japan such reliquaries held rocks and stones that represented various deities.
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“God Stones,” indeed …
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synchronicity
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