Vessels: Tesserae
collage
This is another in the Vessels series. I’m not completely happy with it, but that’s how it goes sometimes. The title comes from the central image–the interior of a mosque dome. The tiny tiles that make up the mosaic are called tesserae. A Latin word, it also was used by the Romans to describe small plaques of bone or wood that served as tallies or identification vouchers. A multitude of tiles creating a larger picture; a multitude of people creating a larger society. Each tiny piece is important to the whole, but in becoming part of the whole, the pieces cease exist as individuals. The understanding that there exists an unending conflict between individual identity and society as a whole is at least as ancient as Homer’s Akhilles. Yeah, he was a whinging mamma’s boy, but he did have a legitimate complaint.
There was a recent-ish discussion in one of my groups about old family photographs. Someone said that, after she was dead and gone, who would care who those people were? It’s probably true, and I find that incredibly sad. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so obsessed with getting all the Letters to Esther transcribed. I hate to think that no one cares. I’m not particularly religious. I don’t believe in an afterlife. Once we’re dead, we’re dead. The only way we continue on is in the consciousness of others and in the marks we make on this Earth. If we leave no marks and are unremembered, we truly go back to the dust and ashes from whence we came–just one unremarkable grain of sand among millions of other unremarkable grains of sand.
red paper boat 