a collection

my daughter lives in nyc. she works as a server at a small restaurant in noho. the restaurant defies classification. it is many things to many people, but mostly, it is true to itself. it is a good fit with my daughter.

one of the choices on the dessert menu is an ice cream sundae. when we were there last, my son ordered one. it came with ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and a fortune cookie on top. as i say, eclectic. typically, when a fortune cookie arrives, the patron cracks it open, reads the fortune, everyone laughs, the cookie gets eaten and the fortune is left on the table.

sometime last spring, my daughter started collecting these forgotten fortunes. a jar was placed at the servers' station and over the months, it filled. my daughter took these fortunes, 102 to be exact, and mounted them on a piece of paper. she gave them to me for my birthday. there are food stains on some of them. i like that.

to me, this piece is about seeing in a way that's different. it's about collecting scraps of wisdom. it's about celebrating forgotten memories. it's about recognizing the beauty of discarded objects. as a collection, these fortunes are more beautiful and less definable than they are on their own . this piece is my daughter. love you girl.