i have never been given a gift so sweet. a belt buckle with a starfish etching, brass, early 70’s. TOTALLY my kind of thing. as a serious thrifter and looker for things all great and groovy, i give a lot of amazing vintage gifts and i get good ones, too. but what makes this a gift of note is that it has a story: a story that makes it a possession i will never part with. i’ve carved out a special place in my heart for this buckle, a place where very few things reside — and also a place for the woman who once wore it, who owned it, who schlepped it around for 20+ years. i did not know the owner this buckle once belonged, but based solely on her seemingly rad style, i’m certain she and i would have gotten along quite famously.
it’s funny how things find us. i’ve always been someone who has been searching. in high-school and college i searched for a religion/spiritual practice/ideology that would suit me: catholicism, the kabbalah, zen buddhism, jungian psychology…you name it, it’s likely that i have studied it, and studied it in-depth. my adult life has involved the seeking of other things. the right car, the right person to
( fill in the blank ) with, the right this, the right that. and in the most dark and desperate times, i have searched for myself. lately, it’s been chill on the search front. a sort of quiet acceptance seems to have lodged itself deep within my being. or maybe it’s just apathy — differentiating between the two is sometimes, um, let’s say…. a bit challenging. right? right. all i know is that when you stop searching, settle down and stay still, good things can come.
as to how all this relates to a certain starfish brass belt buckle, here it is: i did not go in search of this particular treasure. instead, it found me. and with it comes the knowing that although it took a very long time to get from there to here, from her to me, it finally did. an impressive journey, wrapped up in the life of a woman that i will never know — but the search finally over, the lost, found. i do believe she would be pleased with where her sea star ended up.
©littlebrownbutterfly