All Together Now

One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite musicals, “Man of La Mancha,” goes like this:

“Whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it’s going to be bad for the pitcher.”

Well in the case of the pticher pictured below, it wasn’t a stone, but rather the backyard patio floor that it made contact with, and yes, it was bad for the pitcher.

The pitcher was on the patio table the night of last week’s hellacious winds, and just as I was not smart enough to heed the weather advisories and take down the adirondack chair I’d put on the roof last summer, so was I not smart enough to close the patio table umbrella, which at some point during that mostly sleepless night caught what must have been a pretty spectacular gust like a vertical sail, which then lifted up the entire table and moved it about three feet from where it had previously stood. Consequently, the pitcher — brought back from Italy by Susan during our 2007 cruise around that country’s seas — tumbled to its doom upon the concrete.

Dutifully I gathered up all the broken bits big and small and badly reassembled them — with the exception of that silver-dollar-sized hole in its belly, the pieces of which I can only list as missing and presumed pulverized.

These reconstructions are a strange habit which I’ve had for most of my life. I think the compulsion to reconstitute what’s been deconstituted is tied to that same unavoidable drive I had to “clean” the graffiti off our garage doors couple months back (and in turn make a bigger mess that the city eventually came and painted out — but it was MY mess, not the taggers). In this case, like the ladybug pot that also shattered that night, it’s not about fixing what’s broken or returning it to its previous unmarred fully functional state. My intent is driven by sentimentality not meticulousness. I mean… just look at it: it’s days as a liquid-bearing vessel are gone.

But its days not even nearly good as new, but better, have begun.

Published by

Will

Will Campbell arrived in town via the maternity ward at Good Sam Hospital way back in OneNineSixFour and has never stopped calling Los Angeles home. Presently he lives in Silver Lake with his wife Susan, their cat Rocky, dogs Terra and Hazel, and a red-eared slider turtle named Mater. Blogging since 2001, Will's web endeavors extend back to 1995 with laonstage.com, a comprehensive theater site that was well received but ever-short on capital (or a business model). The pinnacle of his online success (which speaks volumes) arrived in 1997, when much to his surprise, a hobby site he'd built called VisuaL.A. was named "best website" in Los Angeles magazine's annual "Best of L.A." issue. He enjoys experiencing (and writing about) pretty much anything creative, explorational and/or adventurous, loves his ebike, is a better tennis player than he is horr golfer, and a lover of all creatures great and small -- emphasis on "all."