The Hat

At first I simply wanted something circular, appropriate to the region of thought, feeling, dreams, that life within life or the life that surrounds life, whichever, the problem is the same, escaping and returning to that which one can never leave, circling back to the origins that we felt were in the past but are in fact always revealing themselves in the future become present. So, a hat, a device of containment, a shield against what most of us can’t see, a suitable housing for the movement of our lives, our heads bobbing up and down, going hither and thence in what we imagine not to be under our hats, namely the world. And each time we remove it, spinning, floating it through the air to take residence upon the sofa, or hanging it upon a rack, a hook, a doorknob, we marvel at its instantaneous reversion to thingness, a thing in the world far from our thoughts, our heads, perfectly and admirably useless. The purity of it: circularity without purpose. But then I discovered rain filling my hat recently lost and left on a park bench. As it lay there inverted and exposed, utterly reborn as a vessel gathering the most precious of elements, utilitarian and yet transcendent now in its human position, I rejoiced in such magic, such wondrous possibility, my hair soaked and my thoughts naked to the new life now thrust upon me.