Actually, Dude, Exactly No One Says the World Will End in Ice

Joshua and I had an ongoing argument about what was more authentic. He liked to bid on auctions or maybe he'd go to somebody's garage sale and buy up shoeboxes full of old postcards. To me, that wasn't the least bit real, that was buying it.

I'm an authentic artist of the people. I'm not some trustafarian who bought a career so it doesn't matter if the art profits me or not because I've got the old man's money.

Totally not saying that's who you were, Joshua, but a little?

“You know every single free site, every giveaway in existence,” Joshua once said. "Every single one there ever was."

Not even an insult. A description.

And anyway I built a life on that. My art only uses found objects because my art is all about the truth, the genuine, the real reality that came before cash. Somebody comes to me and asks for money, the minute they do that, I can't even use the thing they're pitching, no matter how cool it is, or how cheap, it's not my art, it's out of here.

In the beginning, I'm only using postcards I found in somebody's recycling bin. A necessity at first, but later a guiding principle. Don't spend. Make them, the viewing public, spend.

Real artists get paid, they don't pay.

Well, you've heard my TED talk. Even if it was a TEDx talk.

Later, I moved away from the pure recycling bin model to start taking postcards out of unsorted trash. I figure that's well within the rules. Trash digging's real, there's a serious element of sport and chance to it. You think it's so easy, pull on the PVC gloves and try it for yourself.

See, even before you start, you have to hunt down the kind of people who throw their postcards in the trash instead of paper recycling. There aren't so many bums like that anymore. Bums with good stuff worth using are even harder to find. There's an epic search involved. A quest.

Even Joshua was impressed by some of my finds. Although maybe don't hold your breath waiting for him to admit it.

Anyway, here's my point. It isn't real if you paid money for it. It's transactional. The real reality isn't for sale.

Come on, Joshua. We've talked about this. A lot.

All I'm saying is the dude completely bypassed the struggle. He openly bought his way out of the scrum and into the museums where the rich friends of his father controlled the purchases--

People liked Joshua. I told him it was because of his old man's money, but he did have a certain charm about him. That rich kid's shiny charm. You liked being around that shine. You liked touching it to see how slick it felt. Even though you knew it was fake and purchased.

This postcard Joshua sent me all water stained from up north someplace where pear trees grow--

I'm holding it now as I walk along this garden path in a cheap wet place where it never stops raining. Once the Pacific Northwest was one of those places, but then it wasn't, and then it got expensive, and then it got Joshua.

So he's up there somewhere drifting broodily and moodily through the orchards. Or he's sitting under a tree playing all artiste and auteur theory. The local fans think whatever he's making is going to be more than an artist's installation at some museum. I mean, come on, these rural rubes don't even know people who go to museums, what even are museums, aren't they in New York, or there's that one in Paris, or--

So Joshua tells them he's collecting images for a film. That he's a location scout. Sometimes, he's a set designer.

I'm only guessing what he told them. Based on what he told other people in other places.

Oh, Joshua.

I twist the postcard in my hand. He did a good job faking the damage. You'd think he really did save it from a flood.

Something twists inside me.

He thought I'd like it. Or maybe he was twitting me because I was in a flood, and actually more than one, but one of them was the real one, the bad one, the famous one, and he told me, he told me-- I did tell you-- that I should move.

Of course, I'm only guessing.

When the trees went up. When the orchard went up. Aren't pears full of water? Aren't men full of water?

70% water. Isn't that the statistic? Men are 70% water? Maybe it's 80.

I haven't got the heart to look it up.

Anyway, this is about the trees. If it didn't rain out there anymore, why wouldn't there be irrigation in that orchard? Why wouldn't there be hoses?

Or maybe there wasn't enough water left in the reservoirs to get anything but a trickle through the hoses.

Still, I'll never understand how trees can light up like that. How pear trees can burn. How apples can burn. How a whole entire orchard can ignite like a torch.

Joshua.

He must have sent this postcard from the village while he was still smug and happy and superior and all, why don't you get out of redneck hell, and you can stay with me, and--

Trees ignite.

Joshua ignites.

I walk down this garden path, postcard in my hand, and the water stains on this postcard aren't the artist's loving hand, or all of them aren't anyway--

Goodbye, my friend. Sleep. May we meet again in a better world where none of this matters.

Photo Credits

Featured Photo: Espaliered Pear Tree by Edna Winti via Creative Commons / Water-stained filter applied by the Author