The metaphor of the jar

When one is lost, the need to pause life's challenges and ponder a simple glass jar becomes an incredible exercise in how one defines fortitude.

For example, is the jar empty? Does dust gather upon its surface? Perhaps there is a smudge of an old fingerprint on its surface you had nearly forgotten. Would you clean it off, or smile as a memory rushes in to fill your jar? What would that memory be? Bananas?

If your jar filled with bananas, they could rot, no matter how tight the seal.

Is it really, rot, though, or have the sugars inside coalesced into a brilliant brown, bringing the sweetness inside, outside? Now imagine, if you will, the jar filled with beans. Baked, of course.

And if the rotten bananas can't be dug out, you may have to leave some residue inside the jar. Perhaps the residue becomes fuzzy... like, uh... the memories of things long past. Now if we drop in the beans... shit!

Perhaps baked bean sauce is spilled on the counter and gets on your pants. As is life. The more you wipe, the more the sauce seeps into the fibers of your jeans and starts to stink. Like life. Life can stink. But it can be cleaned. But it is stubborn. Even with laundry detergent. You might need some white vinegar--but don't rub it! It needs to be sponged. It'll come out eventually. Well, maybe. In the next load.

Forget the beans. What if your jar was only half-full? Like with milk?

Ugh... but don't forget to take out the beans first. Perhaps flies are attracted by the banana residue-bean-milk concoction. If you swat them away, they will just come back. And they might lay eggs.

Perhaps the best thing to do is forget the whole experiment and throw out your jar before you make a terrible mess. You can always get a new one. They aren't that expensive.

But don't toss it in a garbage can that faces the sun. The damn thing will smell of death.