For Aeravi:

I was once told by my English teacher that she was to go to a funeral for a woman she knew when she was younger, and her family requested that everyone bring a jar, filled with something that they considered important or relevant to their relationship with her. She told us to use this information as inspiration, and show her the results when she came back. True story.

Now whenever i think of empty jars, I can see a huge cottage in the British countryside, its summer, and warm, but the weather isn't terribly good, and its probably closing on 5pm, the house's garden stretches down a mild slope, there are giant pot plants, and tools dangling from vines and wooden structures around the edge, and toy trucks and a rickety metal framed swing and see-saw combo, and wooden bench which probably needs to be bonfire fuel, but seeing as its only the kids who use it, it will be left there until winter rains claim it. At the bottom of the garden is a two barred wooden fence, which frames the lower part of the rolling fields which run down the huge hill side to the surrounding valley. To the left of the fields below the fence are more fields, belonging to the neighbours, and to the right, the forest lives. Huge evergreen trees which deepen into black velvet shadows. The place would be scary for a child, had it not been coupled with the beauty of the surrounding valley, and if you had lived there your whole life, you had nothing to fear of the close relationship you developed with its outer edges, searching for whatever secrets it is that forests keep.

Whenever i see empty jars, I see a small girl in a flower patterned summer dress and a tatty cardigan that she is only allowed to wear when there is no change of the family going out in the day. Its garden clothes. She wears red wellies and had her hair tied back in a knot, but not very successfully. She is coming out of the giant wooden door at the centre of the back of the house, and struggling to shut it because her arms are too short for her body to get out of the way when she pulls on the handle, completely ignores the need to tell people where she is going. She's carrying a large empty glass jar, with the lid in the pocket of her dress, and she is heading straight for the fence at the bottom of the garden. It takes a small amount of concentration for her to hoist herself over the sty, but she's thinking of other things, and absent mindedly jumps down and hops into the forest, going about her daily business, like she is not that interested in it, but knows its got to be done.

Whenever I see empty jars, I see a huge forest and this girl far too small to fit into the picture proportionally strolling along, looking up at the wildlife, touching her favourite trees, lest the gremlins come out of the holes that only a human touch can close (lucky for the forest that she is there then really), picking small flower shrubs that are growing in the sunny patches and dropping them moments later because she forgot what it was she was fiddling with. All the time, keeping pace and knowing exactly where she was going, carrying the large jar all the while. At one point, there is a yellow forest flower, which is probably attached to a giant weed, she scoops up some compost from the ground absent mindedly with the jar without looking at what she is doing, while she concentrates on pulling the flower free without upsetting the rest of the plant. She pots the flower and carries on trotting through. After the picture is clear enough in my head, and i get the feeling she has been walking for long enough to be away from anywhere that would be of interest to any other person, she hops ahead to a ferny area which covers the floor of an arch of two or three trees, like a large doorway, through it she goes and places the jar at her feet.

When I see an empty jar, I see the jar with the yellow flower full of soil at the feet of the girl with the red wellies, and touching the far edge of the jar is another empty jar, and in front of that jar is another, and in front of that jar is a wall of jars, and stretching like a wonky round house outward, either side of the girl, and behind the wall of jars are more jars, and the jars tower above her into the sky, like jacks beanstalk. Less than a third of the jars have plants in them, some ferns, some flowers, growing and spilling out into the jars below them. Some of the jars are green, some are brown, some special ones are blue, and occasionally there is a pink tinted jar. As the tower goes up they begin to glisten in the shards of sunlight that hit them. I imagine if it went as high as the sky, that there would be clouds and birds circulating the top jars. The girl stands for a while marvelling at the height of the structure, smiles to herself, and turns and hops all the way back to the house, through the forest, over the fence, through the trucks and toys and shovels and plants, onto the step of the giant yellow wooden door, and back into the house.

She has such a responsibility, but she never fails to uphold it.