Chandeliers

There are days when I feel like one of the chandeliers in the Ritz-Carlton and it was such a painfully beautiful experience when I finally saw them. Hanging high above me, suspended from the ceiling on delicate gold chains that were probably hardware store iron in reality. Every crystal was sending fractals of light in every direction and the mirrors covering the walls created infinity. The effect was dazzling. The scarlet carpet, mahogany walls, white table clothes and gilded chairs - rich in the warm 'candlelight'  of those untouchable chandeliers.

Untouchable. Unreachable. Alone. Chandeliers must be the loneliest things in the Ritz-Carlton. Everything else is touched and loved and broken and repaired and those chandeliers just hang high above it all, watching. Maybe long ago they were essential, casting the only light like gemstone constellations but now they're lucky if they get dusted once a year. And when they are touched, they're taken all apart. Their pieces are scattered about a work table and each is cleaned and polished and then, if they're lucky, each piece goes back where it came from and they are hoisted back up to the ceiling to be stared at. Guests step into the foyer or the ballroom and gaze up at them for a few seconds in wonder, until they start to look the same as every other chandelier they've ever seen. Then chandeliers become part of the backdrop, part of the scenery, at best a distraction. And all this time the chandeliers dangle from their chains, shining and shining and shining.

Have you ever seen a chandelier fall? It doesn't happen often but when it does, they absolutely shatter. It's a disaster - bent, scratched metal and cracked glass stones. You never find all the pieces either, no matter how hard you look for them. There will always be at least one little diamond that disappeared in the chaos. So the pieces are replaced with crystals from other, older chandeliers, never quite belonging, but filling the gap adequately. Sometimes, the gaps are just left there, empty.

So when I stepped into the ballroom of the Ritz-Carlton and saw all those chandeliers, hanging together but hanging alone, reflected in the mirrors until there were hundreds of thousands of stone lights, I knew that I was a chandelier. Because chandeliers are beautiful, but chandeliers are dead.