It's been a while since my little Mo Willems tirade-not against Mo, of course. Spring, which is always crazy, gave way to summer and nothing seemed to slow down this year. Until Fennville. We went to Michigan for a week with my husband's family.
The house we rented had a little beach and there, I was able to continue my perilous pursuits. I had just finished a set of revisions on a novel, and while my daughter read my book aloud to me, my son collected rocks and I began piling them up. It was a distracted little activity in homage to Andy Goldsworthy in the beginning, but it grew. After a couple of days, I realized I was getting a little compulsive, and that it was really an extension of the tippy, crazy buildings I draw. My children began to help build and we searched for stones together. It was lovely.
I knew that it was a temporary "installation" but I imagined that the weather would topple it and the sand would bury it, even the water might wash in around them. Without really realizing it, in my imagination, it was all a part of the little rock city's history.
Two days before we left, someone with large feet wearing shoes, destroyed the whole thing. If they hadn't, I might not have realized how attached to it I was. It just seemed so senseless, and unnecessary.
Here are two things that it made me think of:
1. Why was I so invested in this creation?
2. What is it that makes people want to ruin things? Here was something that had nothing to do with this person. They could destroy it, so they did. Why?
It reminds me of children when they build something as tall as possible, because they can't wait to knock it down. We are all creators and destroyers inside, and all the time we are choosing which to be. Like, in kindergarten, I remember doing finger painting. I could never leave it be. The slippery paper and squishy paint felt too good. I would make a picture and then smoosh it and make another. The impulse is there. But I never smooshed someone else's painting.
Maybe the teetering piles of rocks defying nature and gravity was just too tempting. However, going forward, if I am ever tempted to destroy some one's work, I will remember all the bad karma that goes with it. Believe me, it's a lot.
By the way, thanks to the kind neighbor who took photos and gave them to me on our last day. It was a really lovely souvenir of our week.
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