Is this trash? Does it mar the landscape?

After having each served a nine month stint as a cover for the Peace Fire during the six years from 2002 till 2008 these ten galvanized, circular lids now lay with their backs to the ground for a final sleep until their slow dissolve back into the earth.

Rust — a reddish iron oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the presence of water or air moisture and helped along at Windgrove by a sprinkle of sea salt.

Lovely patina. Rather “rustic”.

The fire pit that these lids both protected from rain and wind as well slowing down the combustion rate of the burning logs now sits empty. However, there is something in the remnant fiery afterglow of today’s dormant lids that never fails to rekindle in my mind the many months of daily tending to the Peace Fire and nurturing it along with some 60 tons of firewood.

Instruction from Bly

…….I consider
The Smirnoff bottle on the coffee table; a fly
Lands on it. And then it all happens: the life
Of that bottle flashes before me. Little by little.
Or quickly, it is used up; empty, as clear as it was
Full, it journeys to the dump: it rests upon the mounds of
Beautiful excess where what we are –
Sunflowers, grass, sand –
Is joined to what we make –
Cans, tires and it itself in every form of bottle.
I put on my s.s. coveralls, a saffron robe, knowing I have found
What I was sent to find. The sky speaks to me; the sound
Of the cars on Highway 2 is a song. Soon I will see the pumps.
Those curved rectangles shaped like the U.S. and smell the gas.
Our incense. O country, O moon, O stars,
O american rhyme is yours is mine is ours.

(author unknown)

Notwithstanding the reference to America, I like the notion that the world is one interconnected, chaotic, jumble of material objects. What’s the difference between a vodka bottle and a fly? A rusting lid or decaying log? Does location make a difference? Is one object inherently more beautiful/ugly than the other?

A tree discards a leaf or two. Is this litter? A human discards a can or two. Is this litter? Considering that the origin of “litter” comes from “bed”, the tree is literally littering.

Not that I’m in favour of trashing the landscape, but trash found in the landscape just might offer us an insight into what “ephemeral” might mean in a “natural” setting. My Shakespeare Bench certainly did.

More than anything, though, the rusting lids offer us a chance to reflect upon our own ultimate return to dust.

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Leonardo da Vinci is widely known as an artist and not so well known as a scientist. He was equally both. And what informed both his art and science was a keen observation of nature and its many interconnections. One could even say that Leonardo was an early advocate of a systemic, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the world around him.

Because I will be co-teaching a course on Leonardo this coming May with physicist and systems theorist Fritjof Capra — where I take the role of Leonardo the artist and Fritjof that of Leonardo the scientist — I have been preparing myself by trying to be as deeply observant of nature as Leonardo would have been in his daily walks around Florence, Milan or elsewhere in Italy. Not that I haven’t been doing this regularly in my life here at Windgrove, but the focus is a bit sharper; a bit more curious as to the physics and creativity behind the events.

Last week I had a problem. There was mosquito larvae in the large Balinese water bowl. So, like a scientist, I scratched my head and remembered that a custom in outback farms in Australia was to put kerosene into water tanks to stop the mosquito larvae from growing. It wasn’t because the kero acted as a poison, rather, because oil floats on water, the larvae couldn’t break through it to get a breath of air.

Like Leonardo, who was always improving on previous past solutions, I reasoned that since it was the “oil” aspect that killed the larva a better solution would be to use something not petroleum based and bad for the environment. Therefore, I chose olive oil.

I poured a bit into the water bowl and lo, and behold, my artist self was amazed at the wonderous light show that bubbled up as the oil separated into little droplets and floated to the surface.

My scientist self was intrigued at how the sun’s rays were being dispersed as they passed through each individual drop of oil and focused to a point behind the drop. Would oils of different viscosities give different results? And how did the length of the cone relate to the diameter of the droplet?

“Too beautiful!” stated the artist. “Like little trumpets”.

“Add some more oil.” pleaded the scientist.

“Hark, the herald angels sing.” blurted the artist as I conjured up a whole host of heavenly angels trumpeting the praises of the beauty of this earth.

“Did you kill the little buggers?” asked the morally neutral scientist waiting for a positive response to the experiment.

“Awesome. Just fucking awesome.” they both said.

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