Made Things

Indoor days mean mind wandering and wondering. Not about ideas or literature or art, topics about which I might know something -- sometimes a little or a lot; not about politics or current affairs -- topics about which I read little or much; and not about memories or emotions or family. But about ordinary objects, most of which I don't understand even one tiny bit

Like this: a rectangular metal cover on a utility pole up the hill and across the street. Just above eye level, it covers something electric (I think), but I don't know what. Clamped closed, locked, tagged, and rusting. What its purpose is -- that's one wonder. Another is its manufacture.

Once, several years ago, in Chattanooga, I had something copied as gifts for my brothers -- a wooden profile of Robin Hood that my father had created decades earlier. A sculptor friend sent me to a stamping and fabrication plant in Chattanooga, and the then-owner, a woman, toured me through the plant. At various stations, I watched men control loud machines precision-cutting metal, stamping out tiny bits and large pieces, plain and complicated. The machines ground and whined and clattered; the pieces spat out into large holding bins. I also met a fellow sitting at the controls of a computerized laser cutting machine on the other side of what I assumed was a shatter-proof window. He would trace my archer, program the machine, and make my copies to order.

I suppose this metal cover, with its beautiful circular design (serving no purpose or some hidden one; I don't know which) must have come from one such shop. So many objects, machine-and-man-made, practical and beautiful, populate the made landscape. I am determined to seek them out.

Gimme Shelter

A white sheet in a forest is an invitation to forego a lake stroll for a woods walk. 

What had seemed mysterious from the parking lot grew even more so as I approached. A lean-to or lean-on a stable tree and a fallen tree, the shelter floats like an upside down ribbed hull of an ancient boat, gathered limbs growing in size as they near the mouth of the trunk-cave. 

It's beautiful, I thought, as I approached, cautiously at first, then not so cautiously when I saw how sturdily it had been "constructed." Every limb and branch wore fungi and lichen like honor badges or ornaments, some black, others orange, still others bright green.

 The folks who built this are clever, I thought, like the young stone sculptor at Abbo's Alley. They have made an object of beauty. 

And then I saw the garbage: the fire pit with crushed and burned glass and beer cans and bottles, the empties inside, many others half-burned and strewn into leaves just beyond. 

Could the same folks who built this have also been so careless, so disrespectful?

I hope not.

And I am glad it has been a wet week.

Random Acts of Art

After lying on the ground, shooting this moss over and over again,

I stood, rounded the bend, and laughed.

In forty-eight hours, the single sculpture of the stealthy freshman artist has become twelve.

Such exuberance! Such joy!