Founder

"where did you get this?!" my client exclaimed.

i can't always pinpoint the place or time, but I usually remember how it felt when I found it, the thing. the thing that feels like it jumps into my hand. the scrap of something that feels like it's humming with light, or reading to me in a low gravelly voice - transfixing itself into a space between wakeful and dreaming.

its mottled patina is no cover for the way it slow glitters after a wink no one else has seen.

how did I find it. how does anyone find anything. luck? circumstance? is it because you're searching for it - is desire the seed, the genesis of its fruition? is it just that there's a vague familiarity of it in your heart, and it becomes metal or fibre - or fire - with your touch? or maybe finding is not borne of your act - maybe something found finds you. on purpose. by immaculate direction, sacred intention, the reverse speed of light of a billion stars.

or perhaps you are drawn to it by an invisible red thread like those of Yue Lao, the old Lunar matchmaker God of ancient China, who ties the ankles of those destined to be together.

in any case, finding is mystic alchemy. rare connection. discovery. longing realized, or otherwise activated, then settled; even when you've lost something and you go back over and over again to where you had it, it is found in a new place, where a new context or consciousness exists; having been separated from something, it had another life, so now it has a different character. Now it can be married anew to that which may have always been its destiny, just not before it was lost.

"I don't know," I reply.

"I am just the founder."