A very unlikely thing happened last week, though the mechanics of it came well within the bounds of clockwork causality. I found a small metal bracket on the carpet. The bracket had fallen from a high curtain rail. Next day I discovered that an ancient clay olive-oil lamp on my window sill had been smashed by its perpendicular fall.
It was an ordinary oval little terracotta lamp with a pinched stump handle. Round the wick-hole it was still black from soot. It had never been perfect, as one shoulder was rough where it had rubbed against something before firing.
There was a cross on the top, and I had put it, by way of implied devotion, within range of a reproduction icon on the sill. Russians used to put an icon in the corner of the room as a holy protection, and they might have seen such destruction as a diabolical assault.
In reality the breakage showed nothing except that Newtonian physics or its successor is working. Yet one could still seek a meaning. I mean, if the bracket had fallen on my head, I might have asked: “Why me?”
06 August 2020, The Tablet
If the bracket had fallen on my head, I might have asked, ‘Why me?’
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