Several years ago, a student brought me an Altoid’s tin. She was enthusiastic, overjoyed and thrilled with her red, white and silver container, because inside, she told me, lived her special Russian friend. It was a tiny penguin, ordered online from the USSR, and it was sent to her with more packaging than a little penguin desires. The bird was fingernail size and held the tender loving care of a Soviet artist who meticulously crafted such a talisman. Such artistry makes me happy.
As a boy, I used to love the tiny figurines my grandmother collected in Hamilton, New York. Born in the Ukraine, my grams had an eccentric quality that included decorating mouse holes with drapery, sculpting roses out of laxative gum (post chewing) and designing butterflies out of the wine spilled on her shirts. My Grannie Annie also had drawers full of small, leprechaun-like pip-squeaks from all over the world. At Christmas, grandma would cut a holiday branch (heaven forbid she kill an entire tree) and decorate it with glass ornaments, tinsel and popcorn. Underneath the bifurcated wood, she’d place her figurines: skunks, reindeer, fox, rats, elephants, kittens, unicorns, squirrels, etc -- all positioned in a circular equation of celebrated life. All her friends were the length of an eyelash and made of glass and plastic.
Three years ago, in a novelty shop in Elsinore, Denmark (Helsingor), I stumbled upon a tray of similar glass midgets and my heart leaped out of my chest. Remembering the penguin of my student and the glass zoo of my childhood, I made my first purchase of a few microcosmic glass gnomes: a rooster, a frog, a turtle and a swan. I also purchased a simple gift -- a smile.
Since then, I’ve added additional dwarves here and there. Of course, given that this is Bill Gates’s generation in cyberspace, I’ve also learned that I can purchase an entire army of glass buddies at the click of a computer mouse. On line, for $600, I can have almost every type of lilliputian icon ever designed by Russian artists. There have been days where I’ve really had to restrain the temptation of swooping them all at once (the entire midget universe could belong to me). Yet, I have fallen in love with the adventure of stumbling upon such pocket-sized mites, and with each one comes a story.
When I moved to NY, I was most happy when I realized this stupid collection traveled undamaged. There is a walrus I found at the Kentucky State Fair with Abe Hawkins. There exists the minikin elf I found in St. Augustine, Florida -- the oldest city in America. There is also this one, bizarre creature I call the “mouse sperm” which has the head of a rodent and the tale of a pollywog. Regardless, all of my nubbin half-pints have become the micro-cosmos of my imagination and I believe in the power each one represents to my heart and soul.
There was a day in Kentucky, a couple of years ago, when my sisters visited and found my secret stash of glass creatures. They noted the collection looked much like Grandma’s and we mourned, together, that none of us acquired her little friends at the estate sale when she died. It’s odd, perhaps, but the moment my niece and nephew saw the display of glass animal oompa loompas, I knew there was hope for this world. I will always believe in the hope their eyes showed: the karma, the spirit, the youthfulness and the magic. There’s a galaxy of truth in such expressions.
Such silliness equates
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