Oooh, Shiny!

Channeling my inner corvid collector.

I think I was a crow in an old life. When things are on fire like they are right now—fascists driving the American bus off a cliff, trans friends fearing for their lives, a planet dying by our own hand, grief and sadness gripping the hearts of the people I love—I am drawn to shiny happy things. Like the crow, I collect them and leave them as gifts for myself. I have rocks and toys and stones and interesting detritus on just about every surface in the house.

This bowl lives on our coffee table; I have more on my desk, night table, windowsills, bathroom cabinet, kitchen counter, front porch, side tables, patio, dresser. There’s amethyst, carnelian, opalite, petrified wood, turquoise, selenite, tourmaline, labradorite, kyanite, carvings, a pigeon finger puppet, bumblebee jasper, the bowl of an old clay pipe found in the Hudson, fossils, rose quartz, clear quartz, malachite, lapis lazuli, spinning tops, tiger eye, copper, coral, and countless clay marbles. I can never have too many. I hold them when my heart swells with grief, I fidget with them when I’m on a work call noodling solutions, I rest them on my eyes when I have a migraine.

I need color. I need whimsy. I need art. I need to grab hold of “oooh shiny!” things to remind me that beauty still exists in the here and now—because as I watch my country get violated and pillaged again and again and again, it often feels like art and the willingness to see shiny rocks and hoard them like weapons are the only things that can save us.