chocolate wrappers
I have a friend who collects Chocolate wrappers. At least that is what her husband told me. He wanted me to give him the little foil wrapper from the exotic Polish chocolate I had been given as a gift, and not discard it. He said that he was going to give it to his wife who is my friend.
This was four or five years ago.
I did not know him very well at that time, as he had only recently moved in across the street with her, his new wife, when he made this comment, and it was the one night we had invited them over for a steak dinner at our house.
Turns out, she was an artist, and was quite talented. She helped me paint a beautiful painting of a water pitcher, using watercolors. A picture of a pitcher of water using watercolors…lol. I wonder if that was also intentional?
Like how collecting chocolate wrappers seemed so intentional of her.
So for some reason “saving things” was something I was thinking tonight, because I was thinking about how people who needed saving, were more important than chocolate wrappers that needed saving.
Perhaps, I thought, that she had been saving wrappers, because it was, in fact, something she could save, as an artist, and even eventually make a collage. I did not know what she was doing or where she was living these days, but I knew that this lady, my friend, was always doing something interesting and intriguing.
So I looked her up online, and discovered she was still creating beautiful works of art, and living in Europe now.
So what was her purpose for the collection of “wrappers” I wondered?
Suddenly I thought, what if that “collection” was a play on words. What if she wanted to save “rappers”, depicting them as wrappers, and this was her artistic way of conveying it?
But the word rap, instead of wrap, went into a whole different wrong direction. Rap could mean open dialog or it could mean music. Did these people need saving? Did their children need saving? Were they being discarded? Does not seem like they were.
I got my answer as I continued to search sites for this friend, to view her recent art. I found a London based writing website which is where she was from originally, and found that she wrote on that site where other writers regularly contributed as well.
She appears to be in communication with many of them on this site. The first story that I read, was written by a black friend of hers, who talks about how she lost her virginity to a man she thought she loved, but who rejected her. Specifically this friend wrote that when this bad event happened to her, she felt like she was “discarded like a chocolate wrapper”. Oh my!
Is that why my friend saves chocolate wrappers? Because of this lady?
Maybe my friend said she wanted to “save” chocolate wrappers; to symbolically dispute the verbal visualization by her author friend, who was believing herself to have been discarded as “trash”.
Maybe collecting chocolate wrappers was her way to let her friend know that she was VALUED, not discarded, in spite of what one man had done. Maybe she did this to prove a point..maybe to show kindness and understanding, and it matched something this artist lady I knew would do.
Maybe she hoped to convey, that in spite of that traumatic event, it is possible to understand that most men and women are capable of loving and enduring relationships, and that most women and men do not have to see themselves as victims, even in the face of trauma. The wrapper on chocolate, does not identify it’s content as trash…quite the opposite.
Chocolate becomes part of cakes, cookies and candy, not as a steady diet, but as delicious treats. It is prized.
As I continued looking at websites, I saw that my friend is now painting statues in and around Germany. This made me think of the movies where people get turned into stone statues, and I mentally related this to wrappers, and how statues also appear to be “discarded” these days.
But I realized the deception of pretending history is “discarded” by removing a statue, has no more bearing or impact on real history, brought by these individuals in their time, any more than discarding a wrapper, diminishes the value of chocolate.
Bottom line, People have value, in spite how some might treat them, and in spite of of their own self criticism or lack of self awareness. It is wonderful thing, to take the time to let people know they matter, in whatever creative way we can.
Anyone can get treated like trash, by some thoughtless or evil person, but when it happens, is is not something we need to hold on to, and we can in fact discard that hurt without guilt.
We certainly do not need to elevate that, which is symbolic of something discarded, into a work of art. The work of art, the beauty, and the perfection was never in the statue or in the wrapper but was always in the person being portrayed, or, delightfully, in the chocolate.