Watering the Fountains

At 57 I have made the leap into my future in such a way as to prevent any real escape, as though that was possible. My early life was spent in service of the practical measures of making my own way as we all must. I was armed with self discipline as my grub stake and an exaggerated belief in the force of my talent. My great good fortune was to have been the child of cogent parents along with all the misfortune that comes from learning - doubt/certainty, fear/arrogance, strength and frailty. Now that these qualities have been beaten to a mash that nourishes the simple hope for a future for our species, I am no longer thrall to the illusion of significance, yet I have become acutely aware of the importance of doing something - anything. It will not be enough for me to live out my days knowing if there is cosmic royalty, I am the fool for that court. The outside chance that I will leave something other than dust from this rich human experience compels me to reach beyond my convictions to that intangible intersection of human understanding and the void in which we are suspended.

The future in which I have landed consists mostly of work, a deliberate move on my part; it seems to me that of all the improvements to our human condition, none has "manifested" without effort. I also accept my position flies in the face of conventional wisdom where labor saving has brought us such innovations as efficiency without a love of the craft; jobs that we pay to have; communities to which we must have an internet pass, and ideals that are only honored by donation. Nor does my future align with consensus; generally if agreement is the cost of admission it becomes more of a spectator sport. My thinking is if I am to spend so much of my distant future as scattered remnants of the rumpled eccentric who conjures these ideas before you, then I'd better get well and accustomed to being in the elements as they say. It is not a real problem, for my learned parents also imbued me with a warm affiliation with the earth, digging and rolling around in it comes quite naturally to me, far more so than the contortions I need to go through when in society.

So, though I have lept into the path of my rapidly onrushing future like some game of urban chicken with the subway trains, I've allowed for the remote possibility that my buffoonery for our celestial deities is more pointed than simple humor - that there may even be a higher purpose for my fixation on things creative - carved icons of an age gone by. Nor have I limited my existential product line to high art. During the financial rigors of my last marriage I assembled the principle parts of a small fabrication shop in which I could build stacked rock water fountains. People being comprised largely of minerals and water seem mollified by water cascading over stone, whether this novel product will ever rival the hula-hoop or the NBA for the elusive consumer hunger which so effortlessly finances the conspicuous consumption of our new earthly royalty - the 1% - that will just have to play itself out. My responsibility is not to change the course of human history, but to change the course of my own life. To that end, I have removed myself to a remote location at the southern foot of the Sierra Nevadas, and am in the process of casting my lot with the vagaries of chance, rather than remain on a path of incremental security and it's incremental death.

This choice serves multiple functions; I am well aware of my special place as fool to the g_ds, for without their laughter my tenuous position, only becomes serious. What could be funnier than an old man taking a run at the profile necessary to sell high art in a low world? Not only making a claim for significance of an art that heretofore consisted as an aside to the important conversations of the inner sanctum i.e. "yes, well you know, he carves stone," or "yes, but he iscreative," and the ever useful "I like it, but not for my house," but throwing my lot in with the characters living in the margins outside the easy urban containment of modern culture. If I am the only one who sees this as funny, it won't be the first time that has happened, nor the last. But I have done something, I am not waiting for the noose to tighten slowly innervating my belief in a better world; strangulating every better impulse I have used to slog my way through the decay and misery of a collapsing culture. I have only myself to blame for any misery I find, and if there is no moisture, no wellspring or g_d forbid no energy left in my arm to search for beauty - who wants to live like that?

So my days are spent shedding the notion that creativity is for others, the anointed. I must continually correct the language which castigates my higher inclination to find beauty through my own efforts rather than subscribe to the special approval of the teacher, the market, the gang and even the exalted opinion of one's parents. Nor do I have the luxury of turning my back on the very good intentions of my upbringing, for it is that upbringing which has allowed me to arrive at this happy junction in my life. The nexus of my history and my future which includes the abandonment of hope that there will be someone, somewhere that is more important to me than I am to myself - an elusive concept which brings us full circle to the contradictions of most thought. For though there is no one single person as important to my interests as myself - all people are vastly more important to me than I could ever be to myself (regardless of D.E. Tuppins' admonition" after me, you come first.") For just like my fountain; once it is made; once it is on and the water begins to work its magic for all, the entropy of the void prevails and the water is returned to its source. We humans for all of our hubris, for all of our weakness, for all of our ignorance remain the only ones able to replenish our own wells.

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