in lighter times

Color me tacky

Like a harrowing case of teenaged acne that miraculously disappeared, yesterday's viscosity has turned to a cool, clear and bearable lightness this morning. The air, so to speak, is as light as air and the humidity has moved on for the moment.

I wish I weren't affected by heat and humidity, that I were a stalwart of some sort, but the fact is, I am not. The heat and humidity suck me down-down-down into some sluggish puddle in which any inventive, surplus energy is required for more mundane, survival activities.

In the cool, however, the playfulness returns. No more acne, no more galling sluggishness ... for the moment.

Whispering, for example, is a quote attributed in a previous blog entry link to Don Featherstone, the inventor of the plastic pink flamingo lawn ornament and a man who recently died. The scorn heaped on his creation didn't seem to dent his good humor and art-oriented common sense. He kept his art interests to himself as he created ticky-tacky for profit, but he did offer this observation, if the Associated Press is to be believed:

"People say they're [flamingo lawn ornaments] tacky, but all great art began as tacky," Featherstone said in a 1997 interview.

I don't know if this is true or not, but it has the ring of truth to me and, even if it's not true, still it is frisky in an art world too often tinctured with solemnity and ghastly sacrifice. It reminds me of [I think it was] Aldous Huxley who observed approximately, "If the intellectual travels long enough and far enough, he will return to the same place from which the non-intellectual has never started."

Ah well, the air is light, the light is light, the day is here.