26 June 2007

Dinner for One with Three

This one is worth clicking on to view at full size, so you can see what the title is referring to.

The icon in the background is Andrei Rublev's Trinity. If you don't know the work, here's a good discussion of it. One of the key elements of it is that the three persons of the Trinity are seated around a four-sided table with the fourth side open to the viewer, inviting us to join in the holy repast with them, as it were.

As I live alone, I eat alone most of the time. That particular evening I had prepared a fancy meal for myself in honor of a friend whose memorial service I had just celebrated that day (who had given me the recipe for that warm squash salad). In the original photo, I had the program from her memorial service standing up on the table to the left side of the plate, but I ended up deciding to crop that out, because it was irrelevant and distracting to what I felt was more important about the photo. You see, I had noticed something which I had not seen when I took it: the placement of the glass of wine precisely over the table where the Trinity are seated. So it's as if I've accepted their invitation to join them for a meal. And in return, I've invited them to join me at my table, because I fortuitously had set three empty placemats set around my table. None of this was pre-planned. At least not by me... ;-)

1 comment:

Rosie Perera said...

I just spoke on the phone tonight with a mutual friend of the one whose memorial service and squash salad I mentioned in this post. I described the photograph to her. She pointed out something that I'd missed entirely: our friend who died was also included in that fellowship meal with the Trinity, as she's been taken up into the very presence of God. So in a way I'm a bit sorry that I cropped out the photo of her that was on my table, but there were technical/artistic reasons why I chose to do that, and I'd still do it that way. The fact that the meal which she served me and gave me the recipe for is on my plate keeps her present in the photograph.

 

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