Future thoughts…
I can’t really believe in sustainability. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice idea, and of course, we should all strive to waste and harm as little as possible. But as far as long-term sustainability goes, I’ve never seen the evidence of it.
Instead the universe (and everything in it) seems to exist in a constant state of change, a never-ending loop of creation destruction, creation destruction, creation destruction, and so on.
I also assume that the relationship between humanity and the planet earth is, at this point, frail, at best. Our out-of-control growth and consumption is bound to come to some kind of tipping point, and I think the planet will come out on top of that struggle. She’ll shift a few gears, change a couple of settings, and humanity will no longer find this a comfortable place to be.
After a period of chaos, death, reshuffling, etc. things on this planet will return to normal, and the earth will keep on spinning, just with a lot less of us weighing her down. New existences/patterns will rise and the few of us that remain will return to a life as the wild things we were meant to be, as animals with an ongoing echo of culture, as feral and cautious creatures with a slight memory of the monsters we once were.
I think about these future people when I’m making these boxes. I think about the messages they will leave for one another. I wonder where they will find meaning in a world no longer suited for them. I wonder what they will pick up and hold on to, as they scavenge through the rust and memories of something great, something horrible, something gone.
Worship thoughts…
I believe that worship and prayer are an integral part of the human experience. In the past, as we grew and explored our existence, we encountered things/occurrences that were beyond our comprehension. In our efforts to understand the things we could not, we sought out and formed relationships with the demons and spirits that lived along side us. We gave them worship, prayer, and ritual, and in exchange our demons led us towards connection and understanding.
Things are different now. For understanding, we have science, which given enough money and power, can explain almost anything. For worship, we have religion, which through money, power, and violence, has cemented a sterile and stock set of beliefs and stories throughout our culture.
We have all lost in this exchange. For the certainty of provable facts, we’ve given up our ability and ambition to discover our own understandings. For the comfort of prescribed, pre-fabricated religious thought, we’ve given up our personal connections to the demon realm.
I don’t think there is a way back. I don’t think we can shrug off certainty. I don’t think we can go home again. But I do long for the days when our personal belief structure was built through ritual, when we worshiped the things that were too big or too dark to understand, when we all walked hand in hand with our demons, guiding one another towards something complete and whole.
On collecting…
I’ve spent a lot of time wandering around the deserts of Nevada and Utah. Along side the clarity that hangs over those places, I began to find the bones, plants, and bits of trash that had been preserved by the desert sun.
I have been a vegetarian for a long time and initially I began to collect the bones I found as a way of thinking about the animals I ate as a child. It didn’t take long until the piles of tiny skulls and vertebrae began to stack up and the collection took on a meaning all it’s own.
The bones, and the processes of finding and cleaning them, became a way for me to think about death; a way to think about how the ideas and objects we leave behind continue, and how our remnants will be interpreted by those who find them.
To be clear, I’m a scavenger, not a hunter. I’ve never hurt, or killed any of the animals in these quests and projects. Everything in these boxes was found, sometimes clean, sometimes dirty, often smelly, but always already dead.