I like how blogs run time backwards—the latest stuff is what you read first. If you want true chronology you have to go all the way back to the beginning, or at least, to the first post.
My fortune cookie project is finished, and I’m pleased. Small as it seems, this is a project I came up with one night, executed, and—most importantly—completed. One project down, several more to go.
I decided to burn the remaining paper fortunes, so I lit what little remained of an old scented candle, the ones they sell in glass containers. The flames built up as I tossed in each fortune, watching it burn, watching the fire spread across each piece of paper, watching the wax soak into what paper wasn’t on fire yet. It felt all very transcendental—most pleasing.
As I watched the fire grow, a small thought floated through my mind: the glass is getting much hotter than it is usually accustomed to—there’s a lot of fire in there. And as if on cue, my moment of zen is shattered by the sound of the glass base popping and now I’m watching in slow motion as flaming wax no longer contained by glass starts to spread out and toward any number of combustible items on my desk before it’s all smothered by the collapsing glass around it. I can still see it all playing out so perfectly in my head, going from peaceful reflection to sudden panic to stunned silence of it all working out in a single motion without any intervention from me.
Object impermanence indeed.