Broken by Chipka
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Description
For a moment, I was able to imagine a different reality: one where the sky was—as the ancients believed—a kind of celestial blister separating the earth from whatever reach of Heaven existed above. For a moment, it seemed as if there’d been a rebellion in Heaven: warfare between angels of one sort and angels of another. It wasn’t hard to imagine these two factions—the Rebels and the Loyalists—slugging it out. There might have been explosions and angelic weapons-fire. The dome of our sky was the ground on which they fought. For a moment, it wasn’t hard to see a connection between tales of a falling sky and angelic shrapnel raining down to earth. It was easy to imagine the Rebels and the Loyalists, stuck in the convolutions of their own conflict without regard to what their fight did to the human world below.
I thought of this as I saw broken fragments of glass in the oh-so-drab truck-yard that occupies the center of my “professional” life. As my father specializes in transporting dental equipment from a supply house to various dental offices throughout Illinois, it isn’t impossible to see a connection between the truck-yard he uses, and cast-offs of the dental industry.
I know more about dental equipment that I care to. I know the major manufacturers. I can tell the age of a dental exam light by the particular color of the light amplifier coated on the glass of its bulb-housing. It’s all an odd sort of mother-of-pearl blue, but there are subtle differences that tell when such iridescent coats were applied to glass that is thicker or thinner, depending on the overall manufacturing costs of a particular era. I know which junkyards old and obsolete dental exam lights go to—the metal bits of them anyway—and how much they’re worth to recyclers. Not very much now: iron fetches a rather drab penny on the recycler’s market these days.
Though I never thought of it until yesterday, I can tell you which particular truck-yard in Chicago will probably greet you with fragments of obsolete dental exam-light glass, and the occasional bit of dead equipment, stripped of its money-fetching iron. There are laws governing the recycling of x-ray machines, and so there are no dead x-ray devices littering the back-lot grounds. No such laws exist in regard to lights and dental-chair casings, and so there are dead dental chairs, dead light fixtures, cabinetry fragments, and plumbing castoffs of significance only to tooth-drillers. There are fragments of glass: some are impregnated with swirling clouds of iridescence; others are simply coated with it.
When light-amplifying “dental glass” shatters and litters the pebbled ground of a truck yard, it might recall warfare in Heaven and the fragments of fallen sky to mark such celestial calamities. When there is sunlight, the glass will shine in searing and unearthly shades of blue. When it rains, the blue darkens to indigo with ultraviolet aspirations.
There was sunlight yesterday, and clouds in the afternoon, and as the fringes of sunset first peeked above the western horizon, fragments of dental class caught my eye. I was done with the day’s work and on the prowl for woodlice. I found woodlice (two species of them) and I found broken glass, and for the first time in a long, long while, the glass—broken—was worth looking at. It made me wonder what some ancient human might say at the sight of such a blue and shiny substance. Such dwellers in antiquity might well reason that they are fragments of an older sky, one that fell before the blue and often cloudy-gray reconstruction we see when glancing upward today.
As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you're having a fantastic week.
Comments (29)
Meisiekind
Oh I like your comparison between the shard of brilliant blue glass and the sky! Most wonderful image and your narrative gripping as always! Excellent work Chip!
Seaview123
This is really nice work! Good job!
minos_6
Beautiful colours in this, with the blue glass and earthy tones. The budding plant life also gives an interesting contrast - artificial beauty vs the beauty of nature. Your words are out there - both thoughtful and thought provoking.
MrsLubner
Not broken, my friend. It is the fabled Shape Shifter and it has only taken on a new appearance to fool you. It is still what it is, though...simply different. love the intensity both visually and emotionally.
Sea_Dog
Fascinating how you took these few shards and spun such a captivating narrative around them. The colors in the glass are great and I can picture them changing with the weather. Well done.
sandra46
i love how the blue sherds contrast with the stones and the dirt, not only beciause of their color. They are debris from an industrial world, they look pottery from some long forgotten piece of crockery, and the natula context of the soil.
jmb007
bonne photo!!
ShadowsNTime
What a wonderful narration! Oddly I went to the dentist today, lol! In your narration I began thinking of Chicken Little and 'the sky is falling'. I like the abstract value of the image, so many things to look at. The blue of course draws you in but my eyes just wander looking at everything. I see a few bits of green, so its easy to see the sky has fallen on earth...the surrounding soil and stones give the primal feel and thus your narration is perfect! As is the image of course! Thank you so much for stopping to congratulate me on the 600th upload, very kind of you...I am ashamed to say I haven't been here before, I watched the images of Tara and Marilyn, and Dave and Cheri,and Mark and you on their visit to your city so I feel like I know you a bit from that:-) Now I have browsed quickly thru your gallery and see so much that I should not have missed! and I know you a little more...health is an issue right now but I will return and am adding you to my fav artists!
MrsRatbag
Once again you turn the everyday unnoticed into a fabulous musing tale; in another life you must have been a wandering storyteller!
jac204
I will think of this as I go to the dentist Friday! Now of course I can watch "Travels in Europe" in widescreen while being drilled. Thanks for sharing and for seeing things the rest of us miss.
jocko500
"And the Devil was cast out of Heaven..." many demons is chanmed in darken...wonderfful image here
Alex_Antonov
Remarkable work!
watapki66
Wonderful shot!
beachzz
Oh the things we learn in our various jobs. You've learned all about dental equipment, I learned about other stuff not even remotely interesting. The big difference is that you got fotos and I didn't---I so blew it!!
LovelyPoetess
Sometimes it pays to not always look up, but down where your feet are taking you... Wonderful image and words : )
0rest4wicked
Intriguing story and well seen photo op.
kgb224
Outstanding capture my friend.
durleybeachbum
Your brain is so fertile, Chip! Marvellous ramblings today and a rather beautiful image.
lucindawind
wonderful compostion ! nice colours
flavia49
fantastic !!!
zulaan
Mysterious image !
CoreyBlack
I like this a lot. When I first looked at the thumbnail I thought it was drug paraphernalia andonded in a south side vacant lot. Then I thought it was broken potteryon the ground. The coloring really does make it look like broken pieces of sky fallen to earth. The way you describe the way it looks in strong light reminds me of an auto body shop near my house when I was a kid. Me and my other 10 year old motorheads would look at the new wrecks and there would always be cubed chunks of brilliant blue tinted car glass all over the place. Great shot here. The OCD side of my brain now wants to know what era these shards of dental glass are from
auntietk
The light and glass lady is clapping wildly over this image! :D Glass fallen from the sky ... what a perfect way to put it! Excellent work all the way around.
Hendesse
Fantastic textures and colors. Excellent idea and shot, looks super!!
bmac62
I go to a dentist's office usually twice a year to have my teeth cleaned. My visits were far more often and painful as a boy...no floride in the water then...and too many cavities. All this is to say, I have been often tempted to look into the light...I remember ridges in the glass...miniature facsimilies of Fresnel glass lenses found in light houses. And, yes, yellowish blue tones too. The shards in your image above are familiar and have brought me to reconsider all those sideways glances into the light. Wonder what I thought I'd see in there? I see the light...I see the light...oops, now I've got a tune running around in my head. Thanks Chip for stirring up these old, random memories. It is nice to know that they are still part of me:) Cool postwork and another fascinating muse.
A1970Willow
I really admire how you give the view of knowing what this in complete detail in our "reality" (more so than most). On the flip side you look at it without the hold of our "reality" (more so than most). You never cease to amaze me =)
faroutsider
Cracks in the sky...! Trust you to find them.
praep
Well done composition here. A nice shot.
shorterbus
How about the teeth they pull? Where do they go? And those thirty or forty tampaxes they stuff in your mouth? 348 to go. That grunion is looking mighty tastey.