"Often I'd take out my magnifying glass and stare into the chaos that was her face”

On a weekend trip two years ago to Coarsegold, a sleepy conservative town located between Fresno and Yosemite National Park, I stumbled upon an antique flea market in which white older men in camouflage caps were idly seated on Chukchansi Casino folding chairs, trying to hold their ground against aggressive bargain hunters and yelling over the loudspeaker, which was broadcasting the beginning of the second round of the main event: the tarantula race. Strolling through the market, which was set up on an unpaved parking lot in front of the town's only tobacco shop, you couldn't help but wonder what type of people intentionally chose to reside in such a town. The sluggish pace of people's footsteps, the sun beating down mercilessly onto thirsty weeds, misshapen rocks, and kicked up dirt, the church-goer who squats down in his dungarees to examine a $10 dresser on its last legs spit out onto the side of the road. Such sights may bring comfort to some but I felt lonely and eager to get back to "civilization," while fully aware that when I arrived, I would be craving the seclusion of the great outdoors.

It was at this flea market that I found an entire stretch of table devoted solely to selling empty classic glass soda bottles. At the risk of falling victim to the "everything classic is trendy" phenomenon, I whipped out  my Lumix and squatted down to capture a shot of the sunlight hitting the glass in the most apologetic manner. There was nothing spectacular or special about those bottles but I've always had a fascination with glass containers be it pyrex tubs, mason jars, Italian old-world glass bottles, or my newest obsession, weck jars. Left to my devices, I'd save and de-label every glass container I own, while quickly realizing this would undoubtedly secure me a position in the antique fair, complete with my own fold out chair and deep forehead creases. So I resort to collecting jars when they are reasonable priced and if they serve multiple functions in order to seem normal. 

Containers have a way of making me feel like my life is in order, like the things I cherish most will be kept safe and sealed, the comfort of knowing I can write my own labels rather than use pre-established categories, the simple pleasure of being able to see through the glass at my artifactual life unaffected by climate, and the knowledge that when it comes time to uproot to another location, my jars will fit neatly into a paper box, clanking against each other with a knowing nod that says, "The clanking means we have not been separated."

In psychotherapy we often use the term "containment," referring to the safe therapeutic space where difficult emotions can comfortably move about, a component of this having largely to do with the therapist's ability to self-regulate her own emotional reactions and using appropriate boundaries to provide the structure that will
ideally help a patient feel "contained." Not only does the therapist act as a container for the patient, encouraging aversive emotions and relational interplays to be experienced fully within the glass structure, the patient is also able to look through the magnified walls at the patterns and themes contributing to immobilization and ineffectiveness. If you think about it, containment is all at once critical, enlightening, and maddeningly chaotic....

.....I suppose not unlike storing one's life in mason jars with the faint hope that they might keep in the same way that cherry rhubarb preserve would.