Toast, my drawing challenge

Welcome to my drawing challenge with Toast.I'm so very happy that so many people could come toast something this week.We artists, writers, friends and strangers are: Katrin, Barbara, Marian, Kristen, Roberto, Renee, Nadine, Patrice, Lucia, Anneke, Eric, Joke, Linda, Sabine, Tammie, Mano, Stefanie, Carole, Renilde, Susan, Kelly, Dawn, Becca, Jennifer, Melodye, and Catherine and Dot I hope everyone can manage to swing by the blogs, FB pages etc. Such wonderful people as we are should really all know each other.When I was five years old my father put his cup of coffee down on the breakfast table, reached into his pocket and handed me a small test tube full of fossilised sea shells. I shook it like a rattle.“Gently”, he said, “these have been dead a long time. Little things, little things are fragile.” He said.“Remember”, he said, “time kills everything”, he said, “time kills everything.”Those were the last words I remember him saying.From time to time, I spill the seashells into my palm and count them. There are 146 sea shells in that test tube spiralling perfectly in simple geometry, according to the golden mean, by the law of nature.I tip them from one hand to the other listening to them click against each other. They leave traces of prehistoric sand in my palms.I close my eyes and I see the test tube on the breakfast table, I see my father’s tired eyes. I hear him speak.Time kills everything, he said that day at the breakfast table while I sat beside him holding the test tube in my hand.And the dead world inside the test tube remains exactly as before.And he said nothing more and looked at the sky through the open window. On the table, an uneaten slice of toast, a half empty bowl of cereal, a cold cup of coffee, crumbs.A little story, half fiction, half realA little collage half fiction, half real: a page made from various bits of pages, on an old ledger, directions for a swift chess win (not quite fool's mate), a bit of music, a bit of a toast recipe, charcoal, a stamp, gold crumbs.The page and the little story were inspired by this little test tube of prehistoric sea shells. It used to belong to my birth father and he gave it to me when I was very little. It's about the only thing I remember of him.