Scapular
The Scapular is a new version of an ancient item of devotion. It is inspired by the talismanic necklaces worn by monks of certain monastic orders since the thirteen century. The original form of the scapular is comprised of two patches of cloth strung together to form a necklace onto which devotional texts are applied; it is considered a daily reminder of the devotion and promises made by the wearer.
Mine is an open-ended version, a secular version. While I may not adhere to the creed professed by the members of these orders, it seems clear that there is something meaningful in the making-concrete of one’s ideas, in the power that comes from carrying a physical expression of one’s intentions. What these intentions might be is a personal matter and often a private one. This new version offers the container, not the content.
Put simply, the Scapular is a vessel for items of symbolic value which we wish to keep close, close to the skin and close to the heart. It might also be a container suitable to carry reminders on paper, from scribbled notes to sigils, representing the attributes we wish to bring along with us as we go about our days.
My Scapular has been a temporary home for shards of pottery dug up on the beach and for a few grams of gold, carried for many months before being buried under an oak tree after the recent move to New York. It has carried silver and it has carried lead, a single pearl and single kernel of pop-corn.
Having two identical, symmetrical pockets, one front and one back, the Scapular seems to have an inherent polarity. In the two years that I’ve been wearing my first version, while slowly rotating items in and out as necessity dictated, I found these poles aligning with various conceptual pairing in ways I was not expecting. At times one pocket became the home for my private, interior considerations and the second for more collective concerns. At other times the distinction was along chronological lines, with the pocket resting on my back representing where I am coming from and the one on sitting my chest becoming the location of the future configuration I was working towards.
Objects and Ideas
Two of our species’ greatest assets might be the following - The tendency to see patterns in the world and our ability to invest meaning in otherwise inert objects. These related capacities give rise to Science and to Poetry and everything in between.
Ideas are real things. They act in the world in concrete ways and we are their custodians and shepherds. The degree to which this is best characterised metaphorically remains open to debate but I believe inhabiting this understanding offers us an incredibly rich and vital image of the world we inhabit.
