A cautionary tale

Inertia results, not so much in the delay of the future, but in the destruction of its potential.

For a very long time I was aware that the Shakespeare Bench was slowly degrading and that if I wanted its carved-into-the-wood message of “tongues in trees, sermons in stones, books in brooks” to have a longer life, the bench would need to be taken away from its outdoor position along the Peace Path, refurbished and placed indoors.

Although my seemingly good intentions were stymied by a host of delaying factors, the underlying theme was “I’ll do it tomorrow”.

Well, tomorrow is now not likely to come, not after a neighbour and I sat on the bench and it collapsed to the ground under our combined weight because the bench’s interior wood had rotted away leaving just a thin outer shell of little strength.

I could go on and write about how the bench was “returning back to nature” and only following a “natural cycle of life”.

But while true that it was aging nicely and taking on a wonderful patina of grey and lichen, with a modicum of care it could have remained in service many, many more years.

And this is the point I want to make: Even as an ardent environmentalist/artist, I was caught napping, so to speak, and let a very important sculpture fall into disrepair basically through laziness.

It doesn’t matter if this “laziness” was culturally, hormonally, politically, relationally or circumstantially induced. The bottom line is that the talk I talk: “that there are tongues in trees and sermons in stones”, wasn’t honoured by a willingness on my part to be an engaged steward of this message.

So, I’ll take on this “healthy” shame, learn from it, and do what I can to be a better active reciprocator of all the goodness given me by the trees and stones of this earth.

The broken bench has been taken away. Not to be placed on the trash heap, but to be brought to my studio as there just might be a “new” sculpture in the making. One that carries several messages of deep ecology, stewardship and reciprocity and the dangers of not living the words.