In Search of Lost Time

Time flames like a paraffin stove / and what burns are the minutes I live.
                     ― Irving Layton, The Selected Poems


While creating my second altar, I thought it might be more accurate to call them shrines. When I looked up shrine in the dictionary, the definition was "altar." I think I like the word shrine better. This particular one deals with Robert Field, my father's legal guardian and his marriage late in life (he was nearly 60) to Rachel Knuth (she was 52 or 53 when they married). Ken worried that I am using "real objects" and won't I miss them when my shrines sell. They are just things. Most were things that I retrieved out of the trash when my dad was cleaning out their house. Things are not memories. Things aren't people. If someone purchases my shrines, to me it means the things have found a new home.

Next I am thinking about changing the title of "Secrets" to "In Search of Lost Time." As I go through all the things that I have collected from family members over the years, I keep thinking "if I only knew." So many questions will go unanswered.