Fetish Garden

Does anyone else do things that feel completely normal to you, but may seem bizarre or superstitious to others?

Amongst the requisite computer-related items on my desk sits a tray with collection of various trinkets, my Fetish Garden. It holds a clan Cameron badge, a jade three-legged toad, an ingot, coins from countries I’ve visited in a small clay bowl that my son made, a prism with the Mayan calendar carved in it, a replica Egyptian monkey inkwell filled with shells that I picked up from Big Sur after I’d won an award at a writing workshop there, and a carved stone my Mom gave me before surgery, among other things.

I realize these items have meaning only because I have ascribed it to them, but I still find it hard to start my day without acknowledging my garden of oddities or end the day without straightening them up.