Beware new months bearing gifts . . .

{Photos by rocketlass.}

From Edmund de Waal's The Hare with the Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss (2010):

How objects are handed on is all about story-telling. I am giving you this because I love you. Or because it was given to me. Because I bought it somewhere special. Because you will care for it. Because it will complicate your life. Because it will make someone else envious. There is no easy story in legacy. What is remembered and what is forgotten? There can be a chain of forgetting, the rubbing away of previous ownership as much as the slow accretion of stories.

I am giving you this because it is the only one of its kind. I am giving you this because no one else will. I am giving you this because I need you to keep it safe. I am giving you this because I was told to do so. I am giving you this because I have had it too long. I am giving you this because I need you to understand. I am giving you this because of what it does to my thoughts. I am giving you this because I was ordered to do so.

I am giving you this because I need to forget. I am giving you this because I cannot think of any other way out. I am giving you this because that is what must come next in this story.

I am giving you this because it is October, and I need you to be scared.