This is the first installment in the Artifacts series. The idea came from a friend of mine who recently performed a massive inventory and purge of his physical artifacts and told me he felt much better for it. His purpose was to retain digital images of objects in his life that carried some level of emotional value and then ditch the objects themselves. This seemed imminently practical, yet something I wasn't prepared to do with my own sentimental stacks.
With Artifacts, I am taking a middle ground. I will take a picture of an object and then write about it, but will not dispose of it. So really I'm just adding to its emotional mass. I'm not sure if this is wise.
Tony
In the late 1980s and early1990s, Lori and I got in the habit of scooping up animal bones from wherever we happened to be hiking or exploring. We mostly picked up sheep, cattle and rodent remains.
Knowing this, a friend of ours went back up to his Oregon ranch and disinterred Tony, a beloved horse who had died many years before of natural causes and whose remains had been retired to the back 40, there to reunite with the soil. He collected the top of Tony's skull, carefully wrapped it, and then mailed it to us. He told us that he was happy to give Tony a home, but we needed to respect the remains.
We were delighted to have old Tony's head, and even had a plaque made at a local trophy shop so that anyone who saw him, wherever he hung as we moved from base to base, would know his name. This helped Tony's legacy because a horse skull and name plate hung over your mantle is a great conversation starter. Try it sometime.
Now Tony hangs over the fireplace in our bedroom, which now that I think of it is a little odd, since nobody but us will normally see him.
He watches us while we sleep.
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