The Agony and the Entropy: Three Broken Glasses

A case of emergency with no glass left to break

One broken glass is unfortunate. Two is a pattern. Three is a phenomenon.

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The first glass gave way for no discernible reason. I removed it from a credenza, held it upside-down between my fingers, and it fell apart in my hand. Perhaps it was cracked before I picked it up; maybe not.

Glasses break all the time in restaurants. There were several others that day, probably that very same hour. This one was different, though. Nobody knocked it over or dropped it, it just came apart at the stem and scattered across the floor. No reason. No cause and effect. Just breakage.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. Two of my teammates quickly swept up the pieces and we moved along with our lunch service. Every broken glass counts, but I usually ruminate on my personal responsibility if I’m involved. This one hit me later on, after work.

It just didn’t make sense. Why did it break? If it was already cracked and just waiting to be picked up only to fall apart, why me? I couldn’t track the logic—the metaphysics—and I still can’t.

The second glass cracked under pressure. I piled up too many dishes in my sink, at awkward angles, and busted a family heirloom. It was the last of the heirlooms I regularly used after inheriting a substantial portion of my grandfather’s bar glasses back in college. I still have fourteen stemless martini glasses on display, as they’re ergonomically useless but proudly bear the initials of the late Lester Arley Stern.

The Stern family glasses worth using broke one by one over the decades. The snifters were the first to go. Then the shot glasses. Last year on my 40th birthday, the last engraved piece in regular circulation met its end, then last week my favorite juice glass. I should’ve been more careful. I should’ve dealt with the dishes as they came, rather than piling them up and losing something special. That one hurt.

The third glass to fracture was the newest. One of a pair from the Salvation Army, a solid lowball that I used for everything from tea to lattes to water. The pots, pans, and cutlery purchased online for my new West Hollywood apartment are perfect sets, but most of the flatware and glassware came in pairs or triplets from used discount stores.

This one was stacked atop its twin, neatly arranged on the open shelf above my kitchen sink. I lifted it off, or rather attempted to lift it off, encountered a little tension, and when I pulled with some force my Salvation Army lowball split in two.

We’ve all been there. We twist, we pull, we gently coax the codependent glass from its anchor until we successfully dislodge it, or it surrenders to physics. With very little force, this one broke into two pieces. The act of separation brought its end, which was less startling than the realization that I had somehow killed three glasses in a single day.

One is unfortunate, two a pattern, and three a phenomenon.

I’m gearing up to leave Los Angeles behind after a generally positive four-year stint. My time here resembled a stay at a sort of halfway house. COVID isolation dismantled and diminished me as a person; life in LA has revived and rebuilt me. But as with any halfway house, certain benchmarks of rehabilitation and reintegration indicate when the time has come to move on and move out. That time is now.

LA may be a temporary station between Minneapolis and my next home, but I was here long enough to plant roots. Quite literally, as my little apartment has become overgrown with pothos, monstera, snake plant and Zanzibar gem. Thriving plant life is but one element of a painstakingly curated feng shui—I love my WeHo abode, and I’ll hate to let it go. I’ll hate to leave my job, and I’ll miss much of LA’s singular cultural amenities.

But a separation must commence if I am to continue growing and advancing. It’s not possible without some tension, some pressure, and ultimately some breakage. The departure I’m contemplating isn’t just from LA—I’m looking to settle outside the United States entirely. It’s hard to deny that we’re cooked as a country, and I’m getting out while I still can, on my own terms and in an orderly fashion.

The situation in America has become too far gone. Authoritarian actions keep piling up, like a sink full of dishes nobody’s willing or able to address. Just piling up, one crime after another, one shattered norm after another, until the old inherited institutions and safeguards no longer hold. The last democratic heirlooms are caving under the weight.

It is impossible to fully wrap one’s head and heart around this cruel new reality settling in not just in the US but all over the world. We can connect the dots to try and understand, we can embody and process the anguish and the agony of loss and upheaval. Still, we do not possess the capability to fully grapple with our descent.

Some resort to nihilism; others simply look away. I’ve tried to understand, but the closer I look the less I can see. None of it makes sense. I point fingers, but all the culprits in their credible contributions do not add up to the totality of the suffering at hand and ahead.

It’s inexplicable. Everything is falling apart, and it can’t be stopped, and there’s nobody to blame. We had the whole world in our hands, then it cracked and broke, and shattered into a million pieces. We didn’t break it, but it’s breaking us. We’re in a case of emergency, but there’s no glass left to break.

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Previously, on Certain Thoughts:

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