EARLY MORNING SUPPLIMENT, a half baked essay of sorts, unfinished:

The defacement of a very good temporary public art downtown by suburban teenage boys was on my mind while the teapot boiled and the wind picked up in the courtyard through the large open window behind me. Teenage boys... and how they are the second-most vile creatures on this earth, trumped only by full-grown men. (Not for who they are but for what they are capable of... welll, hardly a difference there, I suppose.) This thought was like a bowl of spaghetti being stirred in my stupid morning mind... and only a stupid morning mind can squeeze out such silly analogies.


The defacement and ultimate closure of the temporary public art installation was only a fleeting thought, but one that kept dive-bombing repeatedly, like those sea-birds, or rather one brain-damaged sea-bird who keeps missing the fish. I imagined the teenage boys in their rock band t-shirts entering, surveying, and destroying just for the adrenaline rush. I suppose this as cheaper than extreme sports, what with the equipment and all... you didn't have to have $2,000 worth of gear to eff-up a sculpture.



These thoughts will come back to me over the years, I'd imagine, like all thoughts and memories tend to do... even the cleverly hidden ones, the ones only triggered by smells or images. Nearly all thoughts are doomed to return, however -it also seems that they have a lifespan, much like a VHS tape. A few, however, seem to become stronger and more brilliant with age. Perhaps someday in the near-ish future science will classify the chemical make-ups of memories and thoughts and we will understand why some fade, some grow or strengthen, and others change over time. Obviously something in the formula there, an equation perhaps that (for reasons of self-preservation or even some kind of complex bio-chemical coping mechanism) the thought or memory is assigned to a preservation equation by how it will affect the brain and therefore the being long-term...

TO give such a situation a scenario, think of a teacher assigning her students to tasks or groups, or a general assigning his troops to various regiments:

(Loud, gruff voice)

"Sanders: you're going to be with the airborne mechanics; Templeton: you're with the deep-sea detonator-defusers; DuPree: aeornatic research and development in uncanny weather conditions and without power; Pyong: laser-booby-trap detection; Williamson: well-digging;" and so-on and so-forth...



There was also an enormous rusty blocky sculpture up in a park near my house which young men often scrawled their tags across in a thick while (was it?) chalk? The problem with this was theat the chalk stained the semi-rusted surface (I think it was a kind of controlled rust situation for appearances' sake. I wanted to put up a sign... I don't know what it would've said... but a sign that would try to reason with these kids, say "hey, defacing art with art is... well, it just isn't working out, fo writ on the dumpsters."

Something like that.



Legitimacy in art is another real woodpecker of the ol' brain. Legitimacy, hmm.



RETRACTION from yesterday's post, my father pointed out that the fireworks were most likely in celebration of the end of Ramadan, NOT just kids causing mischief. Duh.