Meaning vs. Utility

Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 10:36am

Her face haunted my mornings for 6 months. The sadness behind her nameless eyes pierced the books and beer cans that littered my desk. At the end of the year, I was sick of her melancholic influence. To me, she was simply an emblem of my skill. To keep her would have been vanity.

The last morning of my college years, she gazed in disappointment at the minivans and SUVs from a mound of discarded office furniture and broken televisions. Useless symbols of a life left behind.

On the seventh of Mr. Harris' thirteen trips from his daughter's dorm to his Caravan, he heard the tones of her silent lament echoing his own pain. He rushed to the heap of useless items and lifted out the bust I had made in sculpture 101. He knocked on five doors before he found me.
“Did you make this?”
“Oh.... yeah. Do you want it?”
“Why did you throw it out?”
“I don't know, I don't have any use for it... What are you going to do with it?”
“...”

He packed her carefully among his daughter's possessions; the god of meaning amidst the merely useful.