The Peppermint Bottle

Chaim speaks to Itsik.  He thinks Itsik needs to be reminded:
You have already within you all the knowledge for living.  It's only a matter of unlocking it.

~

Somewhere Back East in a famous art gallery stands a security guard who is watching us take in The Peppermint Bottle by Cezanne.  We ask him how it goes.  His room assignment changes periodically so he gets to see different art. What would that be like we wonder. He says: Sometimes the art's not so good and the people are better.

~

The floorboards creak when we take the stairs to the basement of a museum based on living Out West. We have the museum to ourselves. It seems everyone here has already heard the stories, felt the beaver pelts,  and have no need to visit the museum again. We crawl into a teepee display, push a button and listen to Pretty Weasel Yellow Elk's voice talk about the past and how new boarding schools and missions took the children in. I was told I wasn't Indian anymore.

~

Think of me, he whispers to his wife. They are standing in front of a watercolor hanging on the second floor of our local art museum. Downstairs and around the corner is the original entrance to our County Jail, turned lately into our County Museum. I am the beige kayak you never notice on the water. I could be in this very painting and not even know.

~

I return to my home. My son and daughter are preparing dinner. We take skewers and build our own kabobs. Chicken marinated in raspberry vinegarette, orange peppers, baby red potatoes, juicy pineapple, red onions.

I listen to them chatter and admit I like to take lines out of context. This won't be the first time they've forgiven me for adding their words in here.  Everyone should have a name, my daughter says in earnest, spearing three peppers to every two red potatoes. My son stacks a 2:1 ratio of chicken to pineapple and reminds us, All water is old.

~

words: Sherry O'Keefe , Montana (too much august not enough snow)
image: 'Geometry' - Julia Davies, Germany (Magpie days)

~

About the text and the image