Transcript

Tuesday, August 25th, 2026, 9:08am.

I’m on my way from my dentist who I travel an inordinate distance to visit for my biannual checkups. He’s in Newbury Park, roughly 40 miles up the 101 Freeway from me. Wasn’t always this way. Until a couple years ago he maintained a second office in the Miracle Mile District I used to go to. Now it’s a haul, but I’ve been a patient of his for almost 15 years, he’s a good dentist, and I’mm not really interested in starting over with one that’s closer to home.

Right now I am on my way to work. I have been routed along Los Virgenes Road to PCH as opposed to the 101 to the 405, which would be just a parking lot at this time. So with sime transit time to kill, I want to tell the latest episode in the continuing story of “Nothing is Lost, it is Simply not Revealed.

It’s a saying, phrase, prayer, affirmation, whatever you want to call it, that my mother taught me very early on when I would misplace something. She would tell me to repeat after her: “Nothing is lost, it is simply not revealed.” And I would. And I have done that over the course of my life countless times. Countless. Because I’ve misplaced wallets, I’ve lost pets, keys, tools, credit cards any number of items, and most recently a flash drive and my sunglasses.

Now the unique thing about both these items and I lost them on or about the same time I think I misplaced the flashcard maybe a day or two earlier than the sunglasses. The flashcard is something I carry with me. It has a lot of the work that I’ve done in creating artwork and keepsakes and stories and whatnot for my stint at Angel’s Flight. It is a very poor way of transporting a lot of irreplaceable digital stuff. By that I mean it can go away and has briefly in the past, but I’ve always relocated it. Well, it did finally. Vanished.

This time when it went missing the unique thing about as I said both of these items is that I knew the last place I’d seen them. A lot of the times, I don’t know. When I find my wallet missing, I’m like, oh, where was the last place I had it? And I don’t know. But in this case, with the flashcard, I had it at the end of a workday, and I distinctly remember putting it in the pocket of my backpack. where it normally lives, in that pocket. Why do I remember that? Because I remember that I didn’t push it in too far. I didn’t seat it into the bottom of that pocket. Kind of put it there, and I don’t remember zipping the zipper to close that pocket.

The sunglasses I needed for a project. and I brought them to the location for that project. I utilized them in that project, and then I brought them back with me in the vehicle I drove, but I didn’t notice them missing until a couple days later. where I was nowhere near that vehicle and the weekend came and I thought, well, I’ll just find them on Monday when I’m back where that vehicle is.

In the meanwhile, I’d known the flashcard is missing and I’m assuming I know where my sunglasses are — these are prescription suglasses. These aren’t just any run-of-the-mill.

For the flashcard, I went through every crevice of my backpack, through every pocket. I retraced steps. So if I put it in the pocket at the end of that workday, I meticulously went over all areas where it might have fallen out, right? It was nowhere in the office where I was at, it was nowhere in the path through the building that I took, it was nowhere in the parking lot where my car was parked. It was nowhere in the car. It was nowhere in the garage at home. It was nowhere to be seen on the path from my garage up the stairs into the house to the desk. And trust me, I checked repeatedly.

And all the while, you know, this sense of foreboding set in, but I would meet it with my mom’s tried and true “Nothing is lost, it is simply not revealed.”

So come Monday, I come back, I go into the vehicle where I believe my sunglasses are,butthey are not there. A hat that I had been wearing that I left in the car with my sunglasses was there.

So I tear apart the car looking for it, looking for the sunglasses, and I don’t find them. I look under seats, floormats, cubby holes, I send an e-mail to a coworker wondering if they got left behind at that project. She told me that they looked and the sunglasses had not been left behind.

So by all rights, the flashcard should be in the pocket of my backpack and the sunglasses should be in the vehicle I drove to and from the project I was involved in. But they’re not. It is maddening.

Days go by. And each time that sense of foreboding gets met with “Nothing is lost that is simply not revealed,” the phrase my mother, my dear departed mother, instilled in me and which had a measure of success over my lifetime in reuniting me with things that I displaced.

Let’s think about that phrase real quick. It seems profound, but it’s not. It’s simply positive, aletting go of something or trying to. Nothing is lost that is simply not revealed, meaning it will be revealed to you at a later time. So let it go, forget about it.

Personally I am horrible at forgetting about it. Something I’ve lost, I need to have it. I need it to be revealed yesterday. Neither was the case with the flashcord or the sunglasses.

A week goes by. I’m doing something in the garage where that vehicle is parked. Unrelated. It just so happens that the door of that vehicle, I’d forgotten to lock the last time so I opened the door. I look around one more time.

One thing I forgot to mention is that the sunglasses were in a black hard case. They weren’t just, you know, loose. I climbed up into the driver’s seat of the vehicle. I sit there flummoxed. I take a deep breath. I say the phrase. Then I look into, that little well in the driver side door at the bottom where you put stuff. I know I’d looked in there. Multiple times. I know I’d felt in there. Multiple times. I previously had not, to my knowledge, seen or touched the hard case within which were my sunglasses. I looked down into the well. And the lighting is bad in the garage I was in. But I do a double take. And there’s the hard case with my sunglasses in it.

It was very difficult to see because the color of the hard case matched the color of the plastic material of the door well. On top of that, it matched the rough textured feel of the hard case. So maybe I did touch it during a previous search but I thought it was just part of the door well.

Nothing is lost, it is simply not revealed. Sunglasses revealed. I texted my wife Susan, found him. That was, let me think, it was two weeks ago.

In that two weeks: no flash card. Still looking for it. Still retracing steps throughout the journey that I made after I put it in that backpack pocket. Gradually the sense of foreboding gives way to a sense of inevitability taht it’s gone, but I still keep countering with the phrase.

Now, in the course of looking through the backpack at some point in that roughly three-week period where the flashcard was nowhere to be found. A couple of things I pulled out of that pocket were these two white ceramic saucers. Maybe about three inches in diameter. And they’re designed where they can stack together.

At the time and up until a few mintues ago, I could not remember why the hell I had put those two saucers in my backpack and brought them with me to work. It was completely incongruous. It had nothing to do with anything I could recall. Why would I bring these two saucers with me away from the home, where the saucers have lived for all their life?

So I take the two saucers out of my backpack and I put them on the shelf in the kitchen cabinet where they were previously before I brought them with me to work. And again, I can’t, for the life of me, recall why I brought them with me to work.

So two weeks after finding the sunglasses and I’m still going through the motions. I’m even looking through the backpack again. I’m looking through other backpacks. I’m looking through drawers. I’m still not ready to surrender. The sense of foreboding is there that it’s gone forever. and on it a lot of irreplaceable files — a lot of work.

A few days ago, I decided to put one of those saucers on the back gate with some snacks in it — walnuts, peanuts. I put it in front of one of our little cameras to capture the squirrels eating the snacks. I took one off the other and I put it out on the back gate and each morning I refill it with some water and some nuts and I get video of the squirrels, you know, noming the snacks.

On the subject of saucers, on the windowsill above the kitchen sink, I forget where we got them, but we got this little nice trio of ceramic dishes. They’re may be about two inches in diameter, and they each have a motif of a leaf. Those three saucers live on the windowsill and I’ve gotten into the habit of rearranging them just because I’m quirky. Each morning when I get up and I make my coffee I rearrange those three saucers; change the order kind of like I just shuffle them. Every morning. It’s just something to do. LIek I said, quirky.

While I’m waiting for my coffee to brew this morning, I go to do that, but I find Susan has taken one of those little saucers and used it. We bought a French press for some wonderful coffee we got when we were on vacation up in Northern California in July. She made a cup of coffee with the French press and she’s used one of these little three ceramic saucers to put the rinsed-off plunger of the French press on so it won’t dry on the sill.

I come down this morning to make my coffee I see two saucers and then I see the third one occupied by the French press plunger so I take that saucer back and I rejoin it with the other two and do my little, you know, shuffle. The French press pluner is fully dried, but I remember we’ve got one more of those white saucers in the cupboard.

So I reach in there and I grab the saucer — and there’s the flashcard sitting in that saucer.

Nothing is lost, it is simply not revealed.

Why was it in that saucer? I’m still dumbfounded as to why those saucers were in my backpack. But here’s what happened. The saucers were in the backpack, in the same pocket I put the flashcard. And what happened was the flashcard, from whatever jostling occurred in the course of lifting, carrying and setting the backpack down, wound up in between those two saucers in that space between the two stacked saucers.

So when I was first searching for the flashcard three weeks earlier and took those two stacked saucers out of the backpack, I left them stacked and the flashcard was in the gap between the inside bottom of the lower saucer and the outside bottom of the other. The flashcard is just thin enough where it’s not goning to make it uneven.

Normally, when something that has been lost is revealed, I get relatively emotional — especially something that was lost for so long, that had so much irreplaceable stuff on it. You could bet good money that I would be reduced to a blubbering, relieved, ecstatic pile of goo. But all I did was say out loud to no one in particular — maybe the cat who was in the kitchen with me: Nothing is lost. It is simply not revealed.

And I held up that flashcard in triumph And I strutted back to my desk.

But still was the mystery of the saucers that fixated me. For the life of me I could not solve why were those two saucers in my backpack. In a way that answer was also not lost, simply not revealed.

And then a few minutes after leaving the dentist it finally dawned on me.

Weeks before, weeks before any flashcard and sunglass disappearances. I came to the rescue of an injured crow outside the building where I work. Young crow, very messed up. Looked like a broken wing, looked like a broken foot. We caught it up, we put it in a crate. And I brought that crate home. Brought that bird home instead of taking it to the local animal control because I wanted to give it night, a quiet peaceful night. See what good is going on. Give it a shot. And if not, maybe get it to a wildlife rehabber.

When I bring it home that night, I set it up with those two saucers. One’s got a little water in it, one’s got some stuff hopefully the crow would like to eat. I clean the saucers the next day. I refill them. I take the bird with me to work where over the morning I’m trying to get a response from animal welfare rehabbers. No response. No one wants to deal with an injured crow. I’m not qualified. I’m not licensed. My heart may be in the right place but I’m not qualified to provide this animal care, athere could be internal injuries or other conditions.

I was waffling between giving it the old try and getting it to a shelter. And in the end, I took it to a shelter where I’m sure it was probably euthanized. Yeah. And I was heartbroken by that. It really… Even now, it chokes me up, you know?

But afterwards I brought the crate back to work. I got those saucers out of the crate. I cleaned them up. Then I put them in my backpack where they lived after that.

So there you have it. Sunglasses found, flashcard found, saucer mystery solved. Nothing is lost, it is simply not revealed.

PS. I have to give Susan credit. Had she not used one of the windowsill saucers for the French press plunger, one can only speculate how long the flashcard might have remained unrevealed in that saucer in the cupboard.