#17 - Have You Seen My Earring?

I lost them three years ago, not long after the death of my mother. Part of me wants to return to the shop where I purchased them, and buy a pair anew. And part of  me wants to return to the shop where I purchased them, and buy a pair anew.

I have not quite released my attachment to those earrings, even as I write today of gain received in this practice of life, gain received in the moment of loss. 

While we bask, and sweat in the heat and humidity here in New York City, no, I am not looking for an earring. I am not retracing my steps, scourging the streets, looking for a dear piece of metal. But, three years ago, I was. 

My mother and I had found the earrings in a gift shop in Athens, Greece. Silver and gold, the earrings took the shape of the Greek symbol for peace–olive branches. I had those earrings, I would say, for five good years. And then, on a quick errand to the bank, I wound up losing one of the olive branches. 

As those who wear earrings might know, it can seem like losing them is the true cost you pay for having them.  We learn the art, the practice of loss. We earn our adornments & the glimpse of intricacy they behold. 

Today, while looking at a slideshow of photos I saw a photo of me wearing both earrings. I remembered the hotel in the port town of Rafina, just bordering the Petalioi Gulf.  Our room facing the water, I remembered. I remembered walking the fisherman’s beach in search of psári or fish to freeze and bring home to Harlem. This all came back to me.  I remembered, as I looked at the photo, just how beautiful those earrings were, the craftsmanship and care. 

Did I lose the earring to later stir this memory, to remember?  In truth, the earrings were keepsakes from a journey on which I had lost myself and my bearings while abroad. After stabilizing, Mommy had come to take me home, and we made a pretty sweet adventure of it. For me, the earrings reminded me of how much I appreciated Thessaloniki and Thassos, two of the main cities I visited, the hospitality and the food, despite succumbing to illness. 

Are you, too, in the practice of losing things? Do you gain anything in their absence? What form does appreciation take? I know that I take greater care with my things, and at the same time, I limit the number of precious objects in my care. I also do not often change my earrings, opting for the simplicity of a pair of dragonfly studs.

Alternately, what are you in the practice of? By maintaining that practice, where has it taken you? What have you gained as a result of that practice?  If you assume the mode of chef, father, cafe owner, producer, dancer or writer, what cometh of it? Are you creating your present? Are you shaping a vision? If the future is now, does your future look like your future? 

Despite this alarming heat that blankets so many pockets of our earth, we know relatively well that Fall will soon dawn. That the weather will break, and that this season of bounty of ripe purple and peach sweet will wane. This steady practice of the earth to nourish will take leave for a practice of loss. Losing the earth, we shall, only to find her again.

The coming loss of leaves provides certitude that the earth’s green sweater will weave itself together again. Life will go on, strengthened no less. Our losses, then, begin a transmutation, wherein we receive, in some ethereal form, the gravity & weight of the loss in a form that will serve us as it changes us.  

Loss mirrors alchemy. From a silver of metal to a sliver of gold, in losing, we breathe in memory, in shape, in color and form, and then we breathe it all out.