From his university window to my exit from high school, we walk together down a posh street in a city where I’ve lived for more than half my life and he for only three. The street is full of small, colorful stalls run by independent makers; he stops to look at a mug while I watch. It’s a ceramics stand; he studies the object intently while talking to the vendor about how the greatest challenge for designers was reinventing the mug, as he held that piece of craftsmanship from the collection, its handle a solid semicircle, unlike ordinary handles. His knowledge, so distant from my intellect back then, made me feel small, diminished, and in his hands, like the mug.
I watched my grandmother working with her calloused hands on a bobbin lace piece, tossing the bobbins with agility. Months of work now rested in the middle of the dining room table, set with Blue Onion-style earthenware plates, that white ceramic with blue patterns that always haunts me. My great-grandmother cursed me to cry every single time I see one of those plates, and I suspect the textile lace on the table, neglected by the family for some time now, is going to become part of an endless list of things to feel guilty about not knowing how to care for.
When a system loses its core, it doesn’t die immediately; instead, it replaces that core with the nearest substitute to carry out its tasks, until it simply becomes unsustainable. Back in high school, I was waiting for one of the staff members in charge of logging tardiness; the sound of the door opening as I was inspecting a bottle among the decorative objects in the tiny office startled me, and the bottle shattered into tiny pieces. I don’t know why I cried; I broke the core of my curiosity, and the staff member told me not to cry. Her kindness was the substitute; the system keeps running its course until it is no longer sustainable.
Today, in my cupboard, there are only plastic cups. I sit on the kitchen floor; outside, everything is blue and white clouds. There is no fine china, no textiles to forget, because in a way, I made myself forgotten. Irretrievable, I don’t need to be redesigned. The little mug is no longer in his hand, nor am I.