I am, by nature, a minimalist. I didn’t know I was a minimalist until the idea of minimalism became mainstream and I realized everyone was talking about me. Perhaps not me specifically, but the nature of me. I live in a small space as my permanent home – a 380-square-foot apartment – and I live temporarily in an even smaller space – a 300-square-foot apartment – while working on a project in the British Columbia interior.
I am the guy in the aisle at the department store holding a frying pan in my hand, staring at it as if in meditation. Perhaps you’ve seen me, or someone like me, and wondered if he was lost in some memory. I mean, after all, what type of person would stand in an aisle holding and staring at a frying pan for ten minutes while better-behaving customers struggle to get their carts around him?
What I am really doing is some mathematical gymnastics. What is the cost of the item and how many times do I expect to use the frying pan in its lifetime? This will give me the cost per usage. When you’re doing math, it takes your full concentration. It’s one of those therapeutic things you can do if your mind is always in the past or the future. Doing math in your head brings you instantly into the present.
And then I wonder if there are any less-expensive alternatives than the frying pan that will serve the same purpose of cooking my eggs on a Saturday morning, and what those alternatives might be. Perhaps I could run the engine of my van for a long time and fry the eggs on the engine block, although that would cost me a lot in gas and be exceedingly time consuming. I could cook eggs on my balcony using my camping stove and some tin foil. Or I could just get used to eating hard-boiled eggs since I already have a pot, water, and a stove.
But what I’m also doing while standing there in the department-store aisle transfixed with frying pan in hand is wondering if I will really love this object. The frying pan will take up some of the very limited space in my small apartment. I will need to expend time and energy to care for it, to wash it and dry it, possibly to occasionally fix it, and it will fill up part of my mind from time to time when I think about it. There will be emotion attached to the frying pan, but I’m not sure yet if it will be positive emotion or negative emotion. I want to be sure I’m choosing well.
I brought very few household items with me to the British Columbia interior, and although I’m living in a furnished apartment, I’ve had to purchase a few things that were missing and that I use frequently, such as scissors, a folding table, and a corkscrew. There were also no wineglasses here, and although I could drink wine out of my trusted, humble, green, hiking cup, I would miss observing the colour, opacity, and viscosity, or the legs, of the wine. I suppose I could abstain, but where’s the fun in that?
A proper wine glass was in order.
Since I was drinking alone, I needed only a single wine glass. Department and specialty stores seem to sell them in sets of four or six, so I wandered into the dollar store, where happily I found wine glasses that were sold individually. I didn’t take the first glass facing me. Instead, for no particular reason, I reached way, way, way back on the shelf and picked out the second last wine glass in the row.
She wasn’t much of a sight when I first laid eyes on her. But after brushing off the dust with a sleeve, I could see potential. As is my pattern, I stood in the aisle transfixed on the wine glass. The price tag read $1.25. How many times would I use it over its lifetime? What would be the cost per usage?
Would I love it?
The glass was a bit crooked and slightly misshapen, as many wine glasses are, but this happens more frequently with the less expensive ones. She was heavy and solid, not dainty and fragile like my hoity-toity, shi-shi-foo-foo wine glasses back home (my goodness, they can be so snobbish!) There was more beauty in her imperfections than beauty in all of my other unblemished wine glasses combined. I could tell that she had strong virtues, like purpose, integrity, and perseverance. She was the underdog. To be chosen for the best wine the Okanagan had to offer would require humility, strength, and a sense of service. Her innate qualities are virtues I strive to live by myself, so she was inspirational in her simplicity and strength.
Many people would think nothing of a dollar-store wine glass, that it would be a tool of convenience at best, but certainly something that wouldn’t be missed if discarded or accidentally broken. Yet someone, somewhere in the world, had the idea to make this wine glass. And then someone else, maybe many other people, worked together to create the system in which to build the wine glass. To make any kind of glass requires the collection of silica, found in raw materials such as sand, limestone, and soda ash, and the ability to heat this concoction up to liquid form. And since sand doesn’t melt until it reaches 1,700 degrees Celsius, it would take some significant work and ingenuity to create the conditions and equipment to attain that level of heat. After the sand is melted into liquid form, it needs to be poured into a mold in the shape of a wine glass. Someone had to have the idea to make that mold and then someone had to physically create the mold.
That’s an awful lot of work to create a simple wine glass. It had to have been worth it to many people. And to think that all of this could have been done, plus shipped from wherever it was created in the world to my little community, and then be sold by a store requiring some level of profit, for only $1.25 is truly astounding. So, I stood in the aisle, transfixed, staring at the glass, and thinking about how amazing it truly was. Someone, somewhere along the way in producing this wine glass, loved what they were doing and loved what they had created. It was heart-warming.
Of all the wine glasses on the shelf, I blindly picked this particular one. Did she pick me as well on some existential level? Were we meant to be together in some cosmic way?
I decided I loved the little wine glass, that I would happily give her shelf space in my little apartment, and joyfully dote on her from time to time, polishing her to a spotless gleam.
I took her to my temporary home, cleaned her up, and opened my wine bottle. I was delighted that my wine would be the first to be captured in her bowl, and as I poured, the wine slid easily into the glass. I lifted her by the stem, toasted the distant mountains I can see through my window, thanked my new wine glass for her excellent service, and had my first taste of Okanagan wine in more than a month. It was exquisite.
I smiled to myself. And then chuckled as I thought about my pretentious wine glasses back home. When I return, they will be shocked to find this new dollar-store gem in their midst. Should be entertaining.
My dollar store wine glass might be my favourite wine glass. Lovely choice.