Saturday, May 1, 2010

It is funny how attachments work!

My friends and I had planned to attended an event to help feed the homeless called Empty Bowl.
The idea behind it was, for local artist and groups to produce ceramic bowls that could be produced and donated to the organization and then sold to the public at a nominal fee along with a cup of soup. The proceeds would then go to help feed the homeless. This premise is very worthwhile and I whole heartily believe in helping those that are down on their luck and I thought this would be a great way to spend some time with two very great friends.

I need to tell you that I am not normally attached to objects but I have participated in something similar to this before and I had bowl that I purchased that I love and used every opportunity there was to use a bowl that I could find, until its untimely demise about a month ago. And this months event not only gave me the opportunity to help others but to replace something that I had been missing my bowl.
As I entered the building I was over taken by the ceramic bowls that covered the nearly four very large tables. I forgot what a process it was for me to pick my first bowl years before and there had only been three small shelves, and now here I was faced with these four huge tables filled with hand made beautiful bowls each and every one different and more beautiful than the next. And if it were not hard enough to select just one just as a bowl was picked up there was a kid who would put new bowls in it's place so there was never an empty space.

I thought I was going to go in select a bowl have soup, chat and laugh with friends and go home!

NO! I had to examine as many of the bowls as I could, this meant holding each one of them. Determining if they were the right weight, color, had the right feel, trying to picture them in MY house, on MY table, with MY food in them.
I carried a few around and then would set one down and pick another on up.
Finally I selected what I thought was the perfect bowl!

Then my friends arrived!

And the process started all over again... only this time I needed their input, not that they would be eating out of MY bowl but I needed the pat on the back from my friends that said yes you selected the correct bowl!
I finally selected a bowl.. it perfectly round, perfectly colored and its balance and weight seemed to be perfect...and just as I was about to pay...the kid replaced it!

WITH THE PERFECT BOWL!
No! Really he had finally put out the bowl that I wanted! I did not even have ask! I knew! This was the ONE! I really Wanted it! It was the bowl for me! And I bought it!