JARRING THOUGHTS

One of my granddaughters recently published a prose poem on her blog which begins with this paragraph:

I want to jar my life. It is keeping me up in the night, glaring and burning in my mind brighter than that streetlight right outside my window. I don't desire to jar my organs, my brain or liver or pieces of fingernails. I must jar moments, smells, people I have met, time we spent, ways I felt, the feeling of no feeling at all. I want to jar things I have read, things I have written, paintings I have seen, tastes of things I couldn't have, nights I haven't slept.

Jessica expresses a hunger for life experiences and wishes to hold on to them, to "jar" them. It is a beautiful and compelling image. One can picture an array of jars lined up on a shelf, neatly labeled and carefully arranged, ready to be opened, allowing the moments preserved therein to be experienced all over again, whenever the whim might strike. But there is something about the use of the word jar that I find oddly disturbing--jarring, in fact. I keep wanting to substitute another word, like vessel, which would probably not at all fit her intent. One couldn't say, for example, "I want to vessel my life." No clear image comes to mind with this word.

Thinking about these terms and their different visual and imaginative impact aroused my interest in how I view a jar as compared with a vessel. Both are containers; a jar is also a vessel. But I think of a jar as having a lid or being stoppered in some way. A vessel also can fit this description, but for some reason I think of a vessel as having a wide opening, like a cup or a bowl. Jessie is right in that a jar is a more appropriate container for holding on to something; we use jars when we preserve or can our food. A vessel, such as a goblet or a bowl, (in my conception at least) is for presenting, for offering, perhaps for sharing. I see a jar as being closed and constricting, a vessel as being open and releasing. These are two very different concepts, psychologically speaking, and perhaps therein lies a clue regarding my own particular interpretation of these two words.

One of the four suits of the Tarot is called Vessels or sometimes Cups. This suit has to do with Water, which is thought to allude to our emotions and is symbolic of the unconscious mind and our instincts. Frequently water imagery suggests movement and flow, or even turbulence. Images of vessels on Tarot cards often are of pools, or rivers, but also can be of jars holding water.

The large jars used in past times for storing both water and olive oil remind me of the story of Pandora. Though today we refer to Pandora's box, it was originally not a box at all, but a jar. In 1500 Erasmus mistakenly (it is assumed) wrote the word pyxis (box) instead of pithos (jar) when recording the myth. Some scholars think he was confusing Psyche, whose story does contain a box, with Pandora. In any case, the mistake has remained in our common usage ever since. Pandora, according to the Greek myth, was, like the Biblical Eve, the first woman on earth. Both were created by male deities, and both were said to be the origin of sickness and death--Eve because of her curiosity and willfulness and Pandora because she opened the jar which released into the world all manner of trouble and sorrow. Imagine! Women, those who give life, were chosen by Zeus and Yahweh as the vehicles for delivering evil into the world of humankind. And yet, Hope was left in the jar.

Pandora means "gifted" or "allgift." So I am brought back to thoughts of my gifted granddaughter who is writing about jars. I see her life as a jar filled with hope and promise and I imagine her as being a vessel, offering all manner of good and beautiful gifts to humankind.