Inertia results, not so much in the delay of the future, but in the destruction of its potential.
For a very long time I was aware that the Shakespeare Bench was slowly degrading and that if I wanted its carved-into-the-wood message of “tongues in trees, sermons in stones, books in brooks” to have a longer life, the bench would need to be taken away from its outdoor position along the Peace Path, refurbished and placed indoors.
Although my seemingly good intentions were stymied by a host of delaying factors, the underlying theme was “I’ll do it tomorrow”.
Well, tomorrow is now not likely to come, not after a neighbour and I sat on the bench and it collapsed to the ground under our combined weight because the bench’s interior wood had rotted away leaving just a thin outer shell of little strength.
I could go on and write about how the bench was “returning back to nature” and only following a “natural cycle of life”.
But while true that it was aging nicely and taking on a wonderful patina of grey and lichen, with a modicum of care it could have remained in service many, many more years.
And this is the point I want to make: Even as an ardent environmentalist/artist, I was caught napping, so to speak, and let a very important sculpture fall into disrepair basically through laziness.
It doesn’t matter if this “laziness” was culturally, hormonally, politically, relationally or circumstantially induced. The bottom line is that the talk I talk: “that there are tongues in trees and sermons in stones”, wasn’t honoured by a willingness on my part to be an engaged steward of this message.
So, I’ll take on this “healthy” shame, learn from it, and do what I can to be a better active reciprocator of all the goodness given me by the trees and stones of this earth.
The broken bench has been taken away. Not to be placed on the trash heap, but to be brought to my studio as there just might be a “new” sculpture in the making. One that carries several messages of deep ecology, stewardship and reciprocity and the dangers of not living the words.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice One Pete..Love feeling Roaring emerge thur the ethers via your blog. What a magnificant treasure in which you dwell!! Where the picture of you’r bald top covered in red kisses?? Fun party
Oh sadness. I loved sitting on that bench. I look forward to seeing its reincarnation.
Peter,
This puts me in mind of how much humanity has produced and then lost over the millennia. How many wonderful glorious and irreplaceable objects and other evanescent aspects of human culture (poems, languages, memories) have eroded away, been recycled (by us or the elements), or simply ‘lost’ (misplaced, overlooked, ruined)?
We have both lived long enough on this planet Peter that the things we have created are rotting, breaking, falling away. Its bittersweet but as you say in your post implicate in life.
Thanks for sharing the Shakespeare Bench’s passing with us. Maybe it should simply be allowed to rot away entirely at the spot and a new piece made to replace it. Perhaps this is another form of maintenance?
Peter. I love that sculpture and social transformation potential. It reminds me of some buxom woman riding the tidal waves of the earth and of ecstasy: her strong calves, bottom back and head and arms engaged and reaching out for a pile of precious flotsam jetsam that represent her life now. I wish you inspiriation too with the sculpture one day and for your forthcoming course at Schumacher College. I have a dream to visit Tasmania – such a beautiful wilderness. I am emigrating to Senegal for a while, where I wish to explore ways of bringing together visionary facilitators to protect the coastline, find sustainable employment within their communities, celebrate the rich local cultural heritage of craft and art and agriculture and freedom lived out. I hope to partner with other organisations and employ diverse systems and eminent social entrepreneurship community training colleges to do this. I wish to use social justice work of Manfred Max Neef, a personal mentor of mine, also Biodanza, the expressive resources in dance and life movement and well-being developed by Rolando Torro. I am intrigued by your own vision and also work of Schumacher College and would like to invite your input and friendship to support my own vision to address the “heritage of enslavement / s ” from my new home-base, in Senegal. And, I have also a narrative-based social health Masters Degree called to be completed somewhere / somehow amidst the chaos of home and the world. Send you greetings from my still home in Southern Africa. Sorry to make a potentially un-ecofriendly suggestion – the bench reminds me of a flotsam jetsam surfboard – could it be reconstituted and preserved back into an living art-piece – moulded into a piece of all-weathering undulating fibreglass bench sculpture perhaps?