This started out as a cracked vinegar container sitting on the pavement next to a clump of hosta, waiting for me to take it to the recycling bin.

Then, from the vantage point of his chair on the patio one night, Peter said: hey that vinegar thing almost looks like it’s supposed to be there, like it’s a… what’s the word—installation.  

And I laughed.

Yeah right, I said. That’s funny. An installation. Like it’s a commentary or something on the emptiness and inflexible nature of society whose sourness has corroded itself from the inside—juxtaposed against the richness and beauty of nature, and how nature will always win because, by comparison, society is nothing more than a cracked bit of plastic.

To which Peter said: what?

To which I said: tomorrow’s recycling, right?

~