art

a number of years ago i ventured in to a corner of the quetico provincial wilderness in canada, and located a wall of granite on the north short of a lake.  on the wall of granite was a set of pictographs created by indigenous people…indians for lack of a more descriptive word.  the pictographs were fascinating.  on various walls of various caves in remote and more urbane portions of the world similar drawings and markings have been located.  further, we have stonehenge and the great carvings on easter island and the sphynx and piramids.  i compare these to the works of art that are on display in the galleries of our modern world.  and i wonder if the folk who drew the pictographs were the renoir’s and picasso’s and calatravas of our more recent world.  sometimes i amuse myself by thinking that some of the most profound and ancient of relics and such were doodlings from mere common men…folk like me…not the prolific artists of their time but the folk that were the bread and butter of their time.  i think about some of the pictures and notes and drawings and menageries i have either created and/or left about in various places in the spaces in which i have spent time…such as the poem i left under the carpet in my wife’s old apartment, or the g.i.joe items i left in the crawlspace in my old house in bay city michigan, or the polaroid i took of myself sitting at the desk of the college president at the institution i attended in river forest…having taken the picture when i was a security guard…and having left the photo in an envelope in the bowels of the storage space under the quad at the university.  or what about the letter i wrote that i left in the air chamber of the pipe organ in the organ at the college i attended in milwaukee…or the stone i placed in the base of a dresser in the basement of the old lady i helped when i lived in chicago…or the set of writings i taped to the undercarriage of the el train that stopped at wilson the north side of chicago.  bits and pieces of an existence that may one day be found and determined to be as meaningful as the person that i am may be