LOUVRE OF THE MOMENT

Out this morning among the new pepper plants, wanted some slender bamboo stalks to use as props for when the peppers get too heavy, so went to the bamboo stash I'd cut earlier that was now dry and leaning between a couple of firewood cords, a perfect spot for the full morning sun to beam all its glory on for just that brief moment, so I couldn't go that way to get to the bamboo stash because there was a work of art there-- a web of impossibly fine silk, woven by a true master, who sat immobile at the center of her shimmering spiral of blues, reds, golds and greens in barely visible strands that rippled softly in the slight morning breeze, like the afterimage of a sleeve of a no longer visible goddess...

How could I barge through that to get the bamboo who cares about bamboo, I'd as soon spray paint the Mona Lisa, so I just stood a long while looking, there in the Louvre of the moment. An indefinite time later, back in the outer world recalling the minor matter at hand, I went the long way around, reached over the neighboring stack of firewood to the bamboo stalks and lifted them out. As I walked away I noticed that the Mona Lisa was sagging. It had been braced not by three invisible strands, as I'd thought, but by four, one of which had been attached to the bamboo.

Now if that creation had been mine, I would have been majorly peeved. But the spider, in her now half-perfect web - the other half of her world wavering and useless - wasn't wasting time and energy cursing whatever clumsy beast had done this to her life's work. She just stood there sensing the setup, then headed immediately out along the nearest intact support strand and doubled it, buttressed its end, then sped along the opposite one and so on, back and forth as I watched, back and forth across the new wasteland that would in time be restored; the past was gone, the future was yet, only she was now...

Gazing at masterworks is never a waste of time.

DRIVEWAY MUSEUM CANDIDATE

I'm not familiar with any of the driveway museums that dot the world, never having had a driveway before, but if I were I'm sure that Asobi, my new driveway by Sogyu, would be a worthy candidate for inclusion-- maybe in the minimalist Japanese/Asian driveway section, given the Sengai Zen connection.

It would be quite at home as well alongside Picasso's driveway in the cubist section, since Asobi definitely features cubist elements. Nor would it be out of place beside Andy Warhol's driveway, for that matter; it lies in the realm of Japanopop, if you put soup labels on some of the stones, with a few dayglo Marilyns and Maos scattered around. Asobi transcends genre.

Needless to say, I'm not on the board of any driveway museum, but if I were I would point out to the driveway traditionalists thereon that Asobi would not even be out of place beside Michaelangelo's driveway, as partly depicted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, or DaVinci's driveway - which stretches out into the distance behind Mona Lisa - or among the impressionist driveways of later years, if you blur your eyes a little or don't wear your glasses - I bet Monet had a nice impressionistic carriageway beside the pond at Vernon; Dali's Daliway would be excellent company as well, partly because the title of my new driveway is, as indicated, Asobi, which comes from the somewhat surreal moment at the end of its creation when, in the pro tem driveway studio in front of my house, Sogyu was applying the final touches and I asked him why he had put the circle, square and triangle just there and he said 'asobi' ("play," as in having fun). And so it was-- and is, fun.

I'll have to put a plaque on there somewhere. And mention that it's not for sale, so passing driveway collectors will stop ringing my doorbell.