I love bottles. Mostly glass bottles, although others types can win my fancy. I like them tall, short, round, or fluted. I particularly enjoy them in colored glass or with unusual lips or shapes. Handles and stoppers are a bonus.
I have an unreasonable love of bottles. Just ask my wife, she'll tell you. I have several boxes I refuse to part with in the basement. I'm building a wall of bottles in the Forte' workshop. I feel a real pang of loss when I see even so simple a thing as a bottle of Two Buck Chuck in the trash. It is not unusual for me to find myself in a resale shop, trolling the kitchen areas, picking out rectangular bottles of blue glass, or little round clear oil and vinegar bottles, or perhaps, something with a fat bottom in smokey grey. My fish tank has colored glass bottles in it, under-lit through the filter plate and gravel.
I may be a bottle addict. I've come to terms with this. I'm in recovery, of sorts. I still want to bring the empty bottles of wine home from restaurants Jill and I go to, but I don't ask for them anymore. I may not be able to carry them to the trash myself, but I can allow it to happen without too much fuss. I no longer... well... I don't often buy alcohol based solely on the attractiveness of the bottle anymore. Recovery! I'm getting better.
But what is it about the whole bottle thing anyway? Why on earth am I such a freak about it? I think I can tell you.
Bottles are mysterious. Especially bottles with no labels. They've got this feeling about them that they could contain... anything. Something delicious, smooth, sweet. Or perhaps poisonous. They might have something old, strong enough to make your chest burn and your eyes water. It might be fizzy. All these, flavors, tastes, and sensations, are modified, the moment you first taste them, by the container they're poured from. If I pour you a tiny glass of something from a jug with an xxx on the side, you'd expect it to taste like turpentine and pack a whallop. If I pour something from a long slender green bottle into a glass flute, you'd expect crisp, light, airy.
The bottle is the expectation. And, like so much of life, expectation is often better than reality. An empty bottle captures this sensation of hopeful excitement almost perfectly.
When I was about fifteen I was out in the woods. Hours from anywhere, not lost, but just wandering, no idea where I was. When the time came to go home I'd head East and eventually hit the highway, take it North, and make it back. But at the moment, I could not tell you where I was. I'd been following a dry creek bed for over an hour, all rocks and overhanging bushes. It was quiet, the tree canopy was split by the dry waterway and light kept pouring down from the left leaving crisp bright spots on the stones, and cool shadows on what would have been the banks. I saw this weird greenish-white reflection slithering on the bank, about fifteen feet from any light. Using my hand to make my own shadow, I was able to track it back to a cleft between two of the creek stones and there, at the bottom, was a bottle, catching the sunlight and throwing it around. I took it out. The thing was tiny, about five inches long, body shaped like a coffin. It was actually white but dried algae had given the reflection a green tinge. It had clots of dirt inside it, and looked like it was, impossibly, full of marbles. It looked old.
As it had caused me to stop, I looked around, wondering where it might have come from, and noticed something odd. A bunch of the rocks on the bank were straight. Too straight. Leaving the bed I discovered the foundations of an old mill. I found a hand dug well and several other old building foundations. It was all so overgrown I could have walked right through and never noticed it. I spent about an hour, poking around. Trying to determine what building was what. Imagining what life there must have been like. A tiny American ruin, discovered on a reflection.
I still have that bottle. I don't know what it originally had in it. There's no way I'll ever know. I don't know who owned it. Or who threw it into a creek by the mill, a creek long since dried and dead. I can't even say how old it is. I'll never know these answers. But I do know what it has in it now. It's the same thing as all my bottles.
My bottles hold daydreams.
