Measuring Life With Coffee Spoons

The metaphor of using everyday objects to note the passing of time is nothing new. Some of us mark calendars, others focus on the seasons. As a child, my every afternoon was marked with the closing line "Like sand in an hourglass, these are the days of our lives." Poet TS Eliot used coffee spoons to measure out a lifetime in The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock to show how the narrator goes from looking to disturb the universe to wondering if he should dare eat a peach, until he finally questions if his mundane life is what he intended at all.

Nostalgia is another way to mark time. More than our personal photos, finding a vintage package of cereal, a childhood toy, or a retro lamp brings us back to a point in our collective consciousness. Members of an entire generation can spend hours reliving details of pop culture, both big and small. I myself keep a can of Octagon cleanser in my basement just as a reminder of the past.

Recently I saw some photographs which connect the nostalgia of vintage-model toy cars with a very modern and clean style. Cliff Gardiner and John Keller from photography studio Klph and John Studio showed one image recently at Ripe Art Gallery, and plan to have an upcoming summer show of many more. On several levels, I love the contrasts they offer: gritty and clean, child-like and ironic, simple and complex.

April is the Cruelest Month

While in the garden yesterday, TS Eliot's The Wasteland came to mind:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

I've often puzzled over Eliot characterizing April as cruel, especially since it's a time of rebirth for both nature and the liturgical calendar. But as I pulled the dead leaves off parts of the garden yesterday to be greeted by the tops of eager plants peeking out of the ground, I thought about the balance of life and death, how one must live with the other.
April is National Poetry Month, an art form that seems on the verge of extinction. Or perhaps, as Eliot might have it, it is merely dormant, about to stir from its slumber back to live with renewed vitality.