Austin, TEXAS, December 13, 2005 — Things reach a point where they aren't useful any longer and they get left behind. Our neigbhborhood's sanitation department 'large item pickup' was December 12. This doesn't mean that the old swing sets, hoses, couches, appliances and various other broken, unwanted things are picked up. That was the first date on which they might be removed. So a lot of broken things (and dreams?) are on the curb just now. It's that season where we get all kinds of new things and have all kinds of hope that somehow our new gadgets will bring happiness.

There is an old quote that I've seen in various forms, attributed to this Eastern thinker or that. Essentially it says to

treat things as if they are 'already broken.' Use the bowl, glass, teacup and enjoy it because one day it will be broken and useless. It is inevitable.

Today I heard a crash in the kitchen. It wasn't that loud or shattering so I wasn't sure anything was broken. Maybe the maid had just clanged a glass on the sink or something.

"What now?" I muttered. The maid has been sort of accident-prone the last few weeks. Then I thought to myself..."Oh it can't matter much. A glass or something is all it is."

Well, it turned out she had pulled the glass tray out of the microwave and it had slipped and crashed to the floor and shattered an edge sending bits of glass all the way into the living room. I scooped up the dog and put her in another room.

We both worked on finding all the glass to clean it up. We measured the thing and I looked up on the WEB and didn't find one that was exactly right and the ones I found were very expensive (over sixty bucks). This particular microwave I bought from a friend years ago for a hundred bucks. It is a huge hulking thing, built in 1985 back when the insulation and parts made the microwaves bigger even though the interior space wasn't huge. I looked a little harder online and found a glass tray that sounded almost exactly right on ebay for $15 minimum bid (plus $12 shipping). I bid on it. Even though we should probably just buy a new microwave, I figured I might could get a new tray and go on. Actually we put a built-in microwave above the stove (in a vent combo) a few years back so we have two. I also read that the reason for the tray is to get the waves to the bottom of the food. (That and to be able to remove the tray and clean up spills easily.)

By the time the maid left, all apologetic and remorseful, I was sanguine about the microwave and its glass tray. I didn't just dump the (still working) thing on the curb. I'll try to get a new tray. Or I'll use the riser rack and see if I can just cook on that. When I bought the thing secondhand (although almost new) from my friend, I didn't figure on using it for almost two decades anyway.

So much about life is about breaking down, things reaching the point of uselessness or shattering in the inevitable fall. We really would be better off if we simply considered all things, including our time on earth, as temporary and fleeting. Because it is really the case.

Somehow each shattered glass I've ever broken is a bit of moving on, growth and change. I even feel that way about the ones that sliced my hands (even this one) and the one that left parts of itself in the disposal and broke it. Somehow I feel that when things are finished and you are through with them and throw them in the trash or give them away that things are right with the world and you are in harmony with it.

It's not that I like it when the maid breaks something. But I like the feeling when I have moved on about it and realize that is is a sign that the way our world works is this: everything is finished one day. It makes everything seem less cosmic, not just the twenty-year-old microwave.

Of course, the maid (who cleans at the houses of many of my acquaintances) told me a story about some other maid at one of these houses shattering an expensive glass sculpture. It could be worse, was the point, I suppose. Even though our house isn't as crowded with expensive geegaws, she could have indeed picked something more expensive to break! But...all those things will be broken, too, one day.