Soy candles

 

We have been going to a lot of Christmas Markets this year.

Sometimes it's the festive spirit I like.

Sometimes it's the unique environments I enjoy; a large brewery, a City Hall, a whole city greenhouse, a plywood town festooned with lights, a grand old theater, a winding private Waldorf school, or the huge historic stone machine shop for Pillsbury in the old milling district.

Sometimes it's simply about the mulled wine or an available glass of micro brewed beer.

Sometimes it's the odd little puzzle of my darling wife and I finding them all, figuring out when to go, and checking them all off our list and checking it twice.

But so far it has never really been the crafts for sale that have made any of it worthwhile me.

Which is odd, because that is nearly all there is to most of these Christmas Markets. They are markets. And they have crafts for sale, usually by local people selling their crafts. I intend for it to be a crucial, salient feature. I hope to be enthralled by it all. I keep an open mind. I would love to find a festive hat, or a beautiful replacement for the cappuccino cup I smashed in a tragic and amusing chain of events that also involved a wine glass and a water glass and a great deal of sweeping and mopping. But there we are walking down every aisle and through every corridor, with a polite smile on our faces to keep the sellers from despair, and we see everything. We look at everyone's wares. We have a delightful time. And then we leave. 

And I only wonder:

What makes a person think:

"The world needs more soy candles just like all the other soy candles, and I am the one to provide them!"

But as my fit of pique passes, and perhaps after later going to work and giving three or four too many tart and too unkind rants to mostly tolerant people who say quietly:

"I kind of like soy candles"

I start to understand.

Here I am with my sprawling clerkmanifesto, but let's even just reduce it to this, this missive called "Soy Candles". While it is not, I am aware even as I write it, my most innovative, adventurous, wild and shining blog post, to me it is nevertheless inimitable in its small way. Who has had this to say about art and craft before? Who has turned this cultural criticism, valid as it may be, twisting into self reflection is such a way before? Show me this particular thought in the world, whatever you may think of it.

But maybe you can do just that. And that's the rub. 

Maybe this has all been said before. Maybe it is as obvious as the old paint on the wall and warrants no comment. Maybe this is the billionth slightest variation on a theme colored and poured out into a beautifully prepared mold a million times

But I chose and mixed the ingredients! I calibrated the careful color of these words! I heated them just so on my careful stove and poured it out here into this unique vessel, clerkmanifesto!

And though to me, knowing every feature of it, and with every detail of this essay, shining out in my own contained, secret, unique tiny flame of the world, this all seems unique and worthy of surely as much consideration as the other things I see considered so much in the world,

What do I know?

Maybe I'm just a person making another soy candle.