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Temple Burn
Jul. 22nd, 2019 08:29 pmI was at Transformus this weekend. One of the things they do is build a temple and invite people to write on it and leave offerings. I left two things.
One was a little shrine I'd built for my dad. This year's temple burn was on the sixth year anniversary of his death, to the day. He even died during a heat wave on a Sunday - and the temple burn is always on Sunday. I printed out a picture of him, a comic I made from his art, and a two page comic I'd made about him. I found a prominent corner that would fit the shrine, then wedged it in. In front of it, I put one of his pipes. On the pipe I wrote "This is a pipe."
Next to that was a bouquet I made from draft letters that were never sent. I stapled on old WinterFire admission badges and a note that said "Goodbye to the Chaos Muppet that crawled into my life and stayed there for a while. It was fun, except when it wasn't." I held the whole thing together with string and dipped it in the purple candle we bought for wax play in 2016 but never used.
The temple burn was very fast and very sudden, like loss should be. Watching my two mis-matched losses go up with everyone else's helped close out some things that have been very slowly burning in my mental and emotional background (as it were). Fire is very powerful like that. I'm still thinking through what it all means, but this little corner of it was something very specific that I did for myself in the midst of everything else that was going on. And I wanted to keep track of the details while I still remember them.
One was a little shrine I'd built for my dad. This year's temple burn was on the sixth year anniversary of his death, to the day. He even died during a heat wave on a Sunday - and the temple burn is always on Sunday. I printed out a picture of him, a comic I made from his art, and a two page comic I'd made about him. I found a prominent corner that would fit the shrine, then wedged it in. In front of it, I put one of his pipes. On the pipe I wrote "This is a pipe."
Next to that was a bouquet I made from draft letters that were never sent. I stapled on old WinterFire admission badges and a note that said "Goodbye to the Chaos Muppet that crawled into my life and stayed there for a while. It was fun, except when it wasn't." I held the whole thing together with string and dipped it in the purple candle we bought for wax play in 2016 but never used.
The temple burn was very fast and very sudden, like loss should be. Watching my two mis-matched losses go up with everyone else's helped close out some things that have been very slowly burning in my mental and emotional background (as it were). Fire is very powerful like that. I'm still thinking through what it all means, but this little corner of it was something very specific that I did for myself in the midst of everything else that was going on. And I wanted to keep track of the details while I still remember them.
