The Wounded Screen

Layers from the other side. A photograph can be a very personal and revealing thing. To have someone casually tell you what they see in it--putting your own labels and thoughts onto its meaning---might feel like a violation. One should simply accept the gift for what it is, and what it wants to be, appreciating it as such unless invited to provide one's thoughts. In this case, I invite my readers to provide their own thoughts on anything I write or post here, as that is the point of putting it here.

The folding rice paper screen that, even as I write this, is allowing me the comfort of not having blinding morning sun in my eyes on the porch, is one I bought years ago when we first moved down to Arizona. I bought it online and it arrived in a long slender cardboard box that I purposely kept for moving purposes. 

At that time we lived on a house on the crest of a ridge in Fountain Hills with a million dollar view over the valley of the Verde River.  My office room was on the south side of the house and was flooded with sunlight all day.  Even then I mainly used it as a room divider, and it was always inside.

When we moved down here to the Valley, I needed it for the outdoor patio in the mornings to create shade. I wanted to leave it up all the time, for privacy as much as shade, but the wind can knock it down, especially at night. More often than not, it impales itself on the posts of the bamboo privacy screen gainst which it is braced, or on the side posts of the rocking chair, and thus receives yet another puncture wound in the rice paper.

The first time it happened, I was disturbed and sad, mourning the loss of my screen's pristine state. I researched the best way to repair the rice paper, but I never got around to it. I decided I could live with it, as the paper still closed so as to function for shade. So the hole remained. Then it got another, and another. Now looking at the screen one sees at least half a dozen such wounds. I barely notice them anymore, except when I care to look

For now I try to keep it from receiving more wounds. This requires the discipline of remembering to go out to the porch before bed and take down the screen, folding it against the wall, since night time is when the wind is mostly to knock it down. 

Also I've better mastered the art of placing a chair next to it in such a way that it will stay upright in most winds, and will not fall over and impale itself on the rocking chair once again.

I have a sentimental attachment to it. I do not want a new one because it will get punctured as well. Also there is a Japanese style which amounts to an appreciation of broken pottery that has been repaired, in such a way as to highlight the brokenness rather than hide it. I always have to look it up. It's called kintsugi. To make my screen a kintsugi screen would repair actually repairing it, which is not likely to happen at this point. Most likely the current one will be thrown out as junk when we leave here, whenever that is. It seems absurd to imaging moving such a damaged item. Until then, I can sit in its shade, and when I too feel wounded and punctured, I can commiserate with it.