Plant A Seed

"I have captured the light and arrested it's flight. The sun itself shall draw my pictures."

- Louis Daguerre (1787-1851) One of the fathers of photography.

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“Sounds like you’re fishing again,” said a patient kid, “with a line long enough to hang laundry on. Anyone here know anything about reading palms?”

“I know what I don’t know. Mine are too small to read.”

“Mine are deeper than water carved canyons,” said a voiceless voice from a formless form.

“Ain’t that grand? Water stone. Yin yang. Gestalt. They sustain each other in a correspondence. The lifeline marries the heart line.”

“Do you see a connection?”

A child with dyslexia spoke, “It’s tough. I’m trying to learn 1,100 ways letters are used to symbolize the forty sounds in the spoken English language.”

“You mean to say, or say to mean,” said a child, “it’s difficult for a learning reader to connect verbal sounds with the letters or symbols that spell that sound?”

“Absolutely. Maybe that explains why there are ten million children in this country with severe reading problems.”

“Show us where the sound of speech has no alphabet.”

“Good on ya. Was it William - the kid from Kansas who lived in the Burroughs - who said language is a virus from outer space, a form of control? Where is he?”

“They took him away for treatment,” said Rose. “Some lab coat rat said he was delirious and firing a Colt-45 at an apple on his wife’s head in Mexico. William said hallucinating improved reality. Reality makes you crazy. It’s empty, dull, boring, tedious and filled with inconclusive abstracts.”

“He ate his Naked Lunch.”

“He dreamed with his eyes open?”

“You got it backwards. He was fast asleep with his eyes open and he woke up by closing his eyes. Everything is a meditation. Everyone is a Buddha. You are a stream-winner.”

“Connect the dots forward.”

“Figures,” said a kid, releasing cost benefit results scribbled on an artificial medical insurance form with a co-pay deductible.

“Some people never learn. They get older sooner and smarter later.”

“You change subjects faster than the weather,” said an observer. “How are we supposed to stay on task here?”

“Buy a ticket,” suggested a kid.

“Are you a ticket taker or a risk taker?”

“If you want to do amazing things you need to take amazing risks and suffer greatly.”

“Anybody have any spare change?” asked a panhandling waif on an aspirator with wealthy aspirations.

“Hmm, I see a faint star at the conjunction of the head and heart life lines. Does that mean anything?” said a kid fingering green palms approaching Easter Is-land on a bamboo raft.

“Depends,” ranted a child orator standing on a soapbox. “Do you mean faint as in non-distinguishable or feint meaning to throw one off a socially agreed upon tacit path implied by pretending to understand anything while processing information with a deft movement?”

“Yes,” philosophized a child with the wit of Camus, “it’s a sublime paradox, this absurd metaphorical life theater. We have aspects of knowing. We know so much and understand nothing. We are affected, infected, rejected or injected by how we feel not what we think we understand. Life is short and sweet. Art is long. Our lives are works of art. It’s not so much that there is something strange about time. What’s strange is what’s going on inside time. We will understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.”

“You’re just saying that,” said a voice.

“Sounds like a description of the food they serve here, speaking of strange,” one resident commented to no one in particular.

“No lie flutter by,” sighed a Monarch’s wings in Greek.

“What’s that have to do with the conservation of angular momentum and a parabola?” queried a child spinning wheelchair tires on a tennis court and making a racket while performing real alignments for friends.

“Do I love you because you are beautiful?” said Rose, “or are you beautiful because I love you?”

“Both,” sang the Greek chorus.

“You get what you pay for,” said a kid ironing words with grit, perseverance and discipline.

“The map (words) is not the territory (perception),” said a child reading The Dictionary of Symbols. They shared a story about dance.

“Dance is a process. Becoming. Shiva symbolizes the union of space, time and destruction. Dance is an ancient form of magic. People wear masks hiding their transformation. They seek to change their dancer into a god or demon. Dance is the incarnation of eternal energy.”

“Well all right then,” said a kid dancing in their death mask. “Let’s trip the light fantastic.”

“You get the face you deserve,” said a makeup artist. “Your mask eats your face.”

A couple of engaged children practiced lines in a theatrical play.

“I thought you’d never get here.”

“Sorry, I was delayed.”

“Obviously. Are you staying?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know, you’re such a mystery child to me.”

“You talk too much.”

“Cut!” yelled a director.

“Was it the line or the delivery?” said a kid.

Rose said, “Welcome to Earth. Hello babies. It’s round, wet and crowded. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. You may make it to 100 if you’re lucky. There’s only one rule. Just be kind.”

Laughing children in wheelchairs gathered at a starting line outside the hospital.  

“Ready? Get set. Go.”

They raced to the Denver Art Museum to meet Tibetan monks arriving from Santa Fe. They worked together for a week creating an intricate Kalachakra Wheel of Time sand mandala. Plant a seed.

ART