home movies
"I'm walking around outside you know, listening to the Symphony of the Melted Snow. I swear, you can’t make this stuff up. It’s a free association jazz-jam, and everyone's invited. You can even pick up a pile of wood chips, bring it to your nose for a long whiff, and then say “this reminds me of home” or “I don’t have a home” or something completely different. And if you look up and see a big silver jet in the sky, always ask why. Don’t put words in my mouth, I know who I am. The woodpecker's den. A scuffle of squirrels. The most insignificant insect hiding under last year's leaves. But even with all the systems in place, Mylar balloons still get caught in trees, and trees don’t have a word for please. Every footstep is a new memory, some unpleasant. Sandhill cranes, wild turkey and pheasant. We learn to be thick skinned so we try to grow bark like trees, but it often ends up as bite. The human condition is that we always know we’re right. Water over time can move rocks like they were dust; roots push up pavement; pipes and fixtures turn to rust. But the blooms always come back. They say the purple loosestrife is invasive, and pushes out the native plants. I guess nature does have armies. Not home movies though; we invented that."
It was many years after I spoke those words, when the portable movie camera had long been a fixture of our daily lives, that someone had the bright idea to gather up all the home movies ever taken, transfer them onto one long roll of film, attach one end to Earth, and drag the other end out into space to let it flow like a comet tail in the cosmic wind, a tribute to all our accomplishments. And so, after years of work by thousands of volunteers, it was finally done, and it was the most glorious waste of time, and after talking it over for a few weeks, we all agreed to never make art again. I told this story to a rat.
~
2015 - 2020