A Luminous Halo

"Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." --Virginia Woolf

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Location: Springfield, Massachusetts, United States

Smith ’69, Purdue ’75. Anarchist; agnostic. Writer. Steward of the Pascal Emory house, an 1871 Second-Empire Victorian; of Sylvie, a 1974 Mercedes-Benz 450SL; and of Taz, a purebred Cockador who sets the standard for her breed. Happy enough for the present in Massachusetts, but always looking East.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

New Hubcap


Today I found two hubcaps. I was paying particular attention as I drove, because it had rained hard recently, and that's when you find hubcaps strewn all over the main roads. I'm still not sure exactly why that is, but for over thirty years I've been observing the phenomenon. Since long before I actually started collecting hubcaps, in fact.

I picked up my first hubcap only a little over two years ago. My friend Brian was missing a hubcap on his car, and we had joked about stopping on the Pike to rescue a stray one. I was walking to Dan Wyman's to pick up a paycheck when I spotted a pretty nice hubcap in a snowbank. Thinking it might fit Brian's car, I grabbed it. When I got home, I hung it on a nail on the kitchen wall in my just-purchased, nearly-empty house.

Weeks went by and I had forgotten to show it to Brian. Meanwhile, I spotted another hubcap on my travels. Home it came and up it went on another existing nail in the kitchen.

Suddenly, I was spotting hubcaps everywhere. Two years later, I've got dozens (still not a one that would fit Brian's tire). I never had a Volvo one, though, till today.

People come over to my elegant home, and when they get into the kitchen and see all the hubcaps, they always comment. First of all on the amazing fifteen-foot-high stained-glass window, but always afterwards on the hubcaps: "What are all those hubcaps doing on your wall?" in an incredulous tone. Hasn't anyone ever heard of urban art???