Being Tankful

Having been a city dweller most of my life, for me fuel delivery was never an issue. It was just there on a need-to-have basis. For a spoiled westerner, fuel for heat, hot water and cooking appeared magically from a pipe in the street. When natural gas arrived on the scene for central heating in the early 20th century, I can recall my grandparents talking about how nervous people were to have it piped into their homes and it took some convincing for them to welcome it. A hundred years later, it is a fact of life, and people are asking for more of it to be harvested. More and more, invisible energy to keep us in the style to which we have become accustomed.

Recently I have decided to chuck the annoyances and unpleasantries (I mean, how much are we supposed to put up with for the ideal of convenience?) of the city and go to a more natural, rural area. In this new environment, one detail that strikes home right away is that you are now responsible for storing your own fuel. What an instant lesson in energy usage; you can get it but not easily, and in getting it, you have to keep it on hand on your property in a tank – a hulking, sometimes rusty container about the size of a buffalo. Well sure, you pay for it either way and if you don’t pay, you don’t have heat. But your consciousness about fuel just increased to the tenth power by having to confront this tank on a daily basis. The alternatives for energy are similar whether urban or rural, except that if you go with gas in the country it comes in a bottle, not a pipe.

At first, it seems like an inconvenience, having a behemoth storage tank in your yard. Shouldn’t it be out of sight/out of mind like it was before? As much as I don’t like looking at it, it acts like Jiminy Cricket on our shoulder, whispering in our ear about our dependence and our usage. It keeps things real, making a large physical statement about energy consumption. You can monitor the gauge, you can lower the thermostat, you can try an alternative, like burning wood. A number of the neighbors do all of these things to reduce consumption, but the fact remains that we need heat.

However, maybe not as wastefully as when we don’t see it. I am thinking of a single apartment building in New York City that takes up an entire block. My brother lives in this particular building, and it has a power plant in the basement that cranks heat up to a point where the tenants open their windows in the winter because it is unbearably hot inside.

As careful as I have always been with energy use, I think that a fuel tank is going to be a constant reminder. Fill it up, empty it out. It is there, regardless. The process is exposed, and you are witness and victim and perpetrator. In this instance it is a placeness of consciousness, of awareness, of a presence of something that looks so out of place but is born of necessity for survival. Use it sparingly, keep it filled up like a family member but don’t overfeed, and let its appearance in the landscape keep us aware of our dependencies and our greed and the fact that this vessel is a solid object informing us that sources of energy are not limitless. And we are responsible for limits.

Not Easy Being Green

It is – or, rather, was – just an ordinary, unremarkable stretch of sidewalk, emanating from the end of a bridge for a block or two down a busy city street; its one distinction, if it can be called that, is that this straight ribbon of pavement had, for the 30 years we’ve walked on or driven past it, been lined by jungle-like and uncontrolled growths of weed trees and bushes and grasses, held as if prisoners behind a low-slung metal traffic barrier which kept pedestrians and vehicles from tumbling down the steep cliff from which this wild flora grew. The wall of green wasn’t pretty, really – only once a year, when a popular bike race whizzes by it, does it get any attention and minimal trimming – but, for those of us living in a concrete-coated city, and to the people who live in the houses lined directly across the street from it, it was a wall of green, a respite, something like an oasis, a natural amenity. Something left alone to be itself, and give its gift, meager though it might be. And, yet, it was a length of urbanness that, if you were mapping the street from memory, you might forget to put it in – it was that personality-less, that undistinguished. It was just there, negligible but subliminally felt.

Careful readers may have noticed the use of the past tense in the previous paragraph. Trucks with choppers and grinders and saws pulled in not too long ago, and by the time they left, every bit of green was sliced away to near ground level, leaving a rude and rough-hewn gash in the landscape. For the residents of the houses opposite, this must have been not only a shock but, actually, a bit of a pleasant one: for, though the greenery is gone, they now have, unobstructed, one of the best views in the neighborhood – the old town area laid out at the foot of the cliff, the canal and river beyond, and, past those, hills and an interstate highway in the distance. People pay a lot for that view and, suddenly, these folks on the street, after decades of gazing out at an impermeable green wall of leaves and vines, now have that great view, and on somebody else’s dime.

Enjoy that view while it lasts, folks. People don’t just clear-cut a forest-y patch for no reason that doesn’t have to do with making money, and so it is here: Soon that gap will be crammed with a dozen or more new townhouses – the uninspired, same old/same old three-stories-and-a-roof-deck, stuccoed and sided ticky-tacky crap that every developer in this area seemingly tore out of a sample book and is stuffing into every lot and open space, and, in this instance, deforesting a swath for it. And, presently, that strip of road, once benefitting from a feeling of some openness, some connection with nature no matter how corralled and limited, will become somewhat more like a canyon, or, certainly, a hemmed-in byway.

And for the pedestrians, like us, who barely acknowledged the existence of this corridor that was the on-ground equivalent of a flyover, we will feel that even though this couple of hundred feet never had anything that one would define as placeness, and certainly nothing resembling art, its absence will generate a lost placeness in our memories. It will be different. It will feel unbalanced and missing an essential element, which it will. Though it was never exactly friendly, it will be decidedly less-so. The air will be different, blighted by the predatory parasitism of modern developers. The light will be different, too. What was undistinguished will now, by comparison, seem distinguished by its congesting mediocrity. We, who cared nothing for this piece of land, will now long for the past nothingness that it was and curse the something that it has been forced to become.

You don’t know what you’ve got till its gone, someone once wrote, and this applies even if you didn’t notice it when it when you had it. Sometimes, perhaps, even more so. I never cared if that piece of the world existed or not; now I am outraged that it is going and gone, taken and lost. Is that placeness, or what?

Art Among Art

Although it can be unfair to compare a small museum’s sculpture garden to a full-blown sculpture park, arslocii holds them both up to the same standards using the same  magnifying glass. We have been to some of the big outdoor-sculpture venues, as well as some of the diminutive ones; and we are fond of any size open-air gallery where the art’s placement is considered and complemented.

This week we visited the Delaware Art Museum, in Wilmington. First (and Delaware is the first state), let’s say that the museum itself is situated in a rather stately neighborhood. Placeness already. The Copeland Sculpture Garden is a slip of land behind the broad-lawned and broad museum building. At first glance the landscape seemed too shallow and uniform to allow any sort of interaction of art and site to occur. Walking through the main entrance and out the glass-walled back, across a large terrace and into the “yard” made me think that this was a private home with garden art. Maybe it once was.

The difference is that what is immediately in your face is Tom Otterness’ “Crying Giant.” It is huge, 13 feet tall, resembling a cartoon version of Rodin’s “Thinker,” but is maybe a more accurate depiction of modern man. The piece is a cluster of geometric solids that has tendril arms and legs, and Mickey Mouse hands and feet. It leans head-in-hands, dunce cap on head, with painful swollen feet and seated on a large cube. For a series of balloon shapes, it is filled with angst, both comic and sad. Is it sad about the state of art? I was moved by its powerful simplicity, but then I wondered … about its placeness. Well, on one level, if it is pondering art then it is filled with arslocii. But then it is reflected so well in an all-glass modern gallery wing of the museum – a sort of looking glass for the angst of modern man. Also, when catching a glimpse of it through the connector bridge between old museum and new, it is handily framed by the architecture, making it appear much diminished and, perhaps, even more sympathetic.

Down a wooded path is an interesting piece by William Freeland, “Irish Pastoral VII,” a minimalist hard edged factory made of rock and steel that felt like a tombstone. Behind it and hidden below grade is an old reservoir structure, a circular pit with stone walls that looks like a train-engine turnabout. Maybe that is because it is now a labyrinth, a spiral made of gravel and stone. That day it was set up for a wedding event and, although empty of guests, it was filled with placeness by what it was and is.

Another interesting work is Robert Stackhouse’s “Delaware Passage,” a rigorously fashioned structure of square metal tubes looking, all at once, like a railroad bridge, a brise soleil, a roof, a dock and a teepee. It plays with perspective, as it is short but endless. It is a striking piece but its placement doesn’t do it any favors.

But what is this? Three large craters encircled by hedges of holly. This Copeland Sculpture Garden is not a collection in which one would expect to find earthworks, but here they are. Only … what they are, in actuality, are functional drainage pits/fields. There are cascading rocks, having been intentionally (and well) placed that lead to large cast cement cubes guarded by iron grates at the bottom of the craters. They are modern and primitive, compelling and mysterious in that they are hidden by the shrubbery. But they are beautifully rendered works that are so integrated into the environment – because, unlike most of the pieces here, they are interacting with the environment. They are of the environment and, though not “art” in its narrow definition, should be considered part of the collection.

Placeness is a funny thing. Sometimes you can gather together things that artists make and which are intentional works of art – and sometimes they can be very good representatives of the form – and they do nothing for you or to you or with you; they do not gain from the setting nor add to it, they do not relate to it in any way nor to the other pieces scattered about, all seemingly with the same purpose – display; all this despite the best efforts of art professionals to show off the work and make something of the place. And then, sometimes, something that is neither created to be a work of art nor is considered to be such – in fact, is hardly considered at all, except as a workaday intruder in the garden – can have such power or attraction or even a compellingly formal nature that it not only challenges your conception of the art and its definition, but makes the o better and the place perfectly contains it, as if it were prepared thoughtfully to do so. A rocky sluice designed to channel water runoff away from the art and into a drain can, somehow, wonderfully, become the centerpiece of the sculpture array – a questioning of the need for intention as a component of art. Arslocii can materialize from something functional as well as something artful, being the product of one or both at the same time. It just happens, and just is. Arslocii.

Fanning the Flames

Air conditioning has never held a place in my life. The only mechanical cooling devices that I have used are electric fans. My father was a mathematician and electrical engineer, and he therefore understood the physics and practicality of products with cords. He would place fans in strategic locations around the house: one was attached across the opening of the attic’s hatch in the ceiling – to draw the hot air up and out through the roof vents; another would be placed in a doorway on the floor to push the warm air up above our heads; others would be set in windows, either blowing in or out, depending on which side of the house. There was an intelligent logic about air masses and air flow that he demonstrated by these placed fans. He never aimed a fan to blow directly on him, though; that might have been more of a superstition than an educated decision.

Aside from the rather extensive collection of fan brands and types – oscillating, box, table, window and hassock, with their big electric motor company logos – I became enamored of their look and style as much as their function. By osmosis, I learned about moving air in a meaningful way. As a pre-teen, whenever I would be blue or upset I would take walks; on one such walk I found a fan in a weedy empty lot. I brought it home and Dad helped me to rewire it. It was a prize. When, as a young adult, an older relative was downsizing and I spied a huge window fan in the “out” pile, I grabbed it like it was the most valued object in the house. Well, to me it was. Many more old electric fans have come to me at yard sales, flea markets and from other family members. At last count, I have four large window fans, five floor fans, five table fans and two fans on stands. They are much loved and oiled on a regular basis. You could say I am a fan fan.

What is it about them? Well, of course, their connection to my father. But they are often round and I like round things; and even if their casing is square they have a round soul or face. The electric whirr of the motors is soothing, and maybe one day someone will discover that it taps into your alpha brain waves in the same way that biofeedback did back in the day. They do actually cool you in the heat, too. I close things up during the hottest part of the day, then I either draw basement air up into the first floor with a window fan; or I pull cooler night air in through the open windows, and by morning you might need a blanket. In my house there is an attic fan, but, as opposed to my father’s scheme, it doesn’t pull hot air from the house; rather, it is solely for evacuating the trapped hot air from the attic. It does have a similar effect of cooling the house, just not as directly.

Anything that has electricity and moves has a life to it. Fans have the added bonus of providing a service, doing something helpful and immediate to cooling our world – without collecting and adding more heat in the process like air conditioning. Buildings shut themselves off, cars are closed up tight with chilled air – chilled air in an unbreathing room belching out hot air for the rest of us. Why aren’t fans good enough anymore? We have made a move on wind power and capturing the energy that it produces. Fans have been using the energy to cool us by evaporation for as long as electricity has been available.

It is sad that the fan – so simple, so effective, so versatile – is in decline in our Air-Conditioner Nation. Take a walk, as I used to, and you’ll see, especially on trash day, fans kicked to the curb, unwanted, dismissed from duty. And, often, they are still good. Within the past few months I have found two in someone’s discard pile, took them home, plugged them in – and they worked like charms. In fact, they are charming, in all senses of the word. In your window, on a table, on the floor, they hum away, pushing air around in the kindest of ways, letting you look through their grill-work to see the blur of their busy blades and views of what’s behind and beyond. An air conditioner merely sits there, a big, personality-less block, like the Borg ship, separating you from the world at large. A fan lends an air of placeness to even the grimmest of rooms; an air conditioner removes placeness, the way it removes heated air, from even the nicest of surroundings. A fan is like a pet; an air conditioner is like a security guard.

You don’t have to be the coolest thing to be the coolest thing.

I’m With the Band

Suddenly I find myself in a sea of rubber bands. Squirmy mounds of bands of varying thickness and lengths sit in a bowl like clusters of rainbow-colored seaweed. They are everywhere. Wasn’t there a time when they nearly disappeared? I am remembering a while ago, maybe the later half of the 20th century, when they weren’t being used as much in offices, schools and homes as they once were.

My fascination with rubber bands started early. I always liked the friendly nature of their form and substance. First, they are round in a predominately square world. But they are shape-shifters, too. Their diameters vary, as do their widths and thicknesses and colors; I have seen some as tiny as a half-inch in total or nearly as long as my forearm. They seem to be one of the longer-lasting, unsung, amazing albeit small, ubiquitous products of the 20th century, after having been patented in the 19th. But the patent is a johnny-come-lately; as states a Wikipedia entry, “Mesoamerican peoples had already produced vulcanized rubber items, including rubber bands, by 1600 BCE.” They did, after all, have the rubber trees within reach.

Lately, I find them everywhere. Our mailman uses them (the large industrial tan or natural-color ones) to bind together individual households’ mail. As he makes his deliveries, he drops the rubber bands on the ground. Not environmentally sound thinking, but you could probably follow his trail of rubber bands to learn his mail route.

I also have noticed that much of the produce I buy is bunched in rubber bands: wide purple or yellow ones, thinner blue ones wrapped multiple times. Some leafy greens still employ large-scale twist-ties – like regular ties on steroids – but many more bunches of vegetable matter, whether shipped in or locally grown, are sporting festive rubber bands. I have such a large collection of them now, I feel that someone ought to figure out another purpose for them. I do reuse some and I have learned a few things indirectly about their properties and uses, slingshots aside.

1. They don’t freeze well. In a freezer, the rubber fails, dries out, becomes inelastic.

2. They can be cheap, attractive bracelets but they should be loose on your arm.

3. Things that aren’t too thick and you can roll up, like blueprints and maps, are perfectly suited to rubber bands to hold them steady. Eventually, they will dry out and loosen.

4. If you are a jerk and want to annoy someone, you can shoot rubber bands in his/her direction – but avoid the eyes.

5. They are a good way to hold wound-up electrical cords together, when a twist-tie just won’t handle it (unless you happen to have saved one of the huge ones from produce).

6. They are not good to pick up in a vacuum cleaner, and happily, it is difficult to do so. Somehow, their lack of substance and friction-y surface help to discourage that.

7. They are miracle healers. If they break – unlike so many other binding technologies – all you have to do is tie the ends together and there you go again … a little smaller, perhaps, and a tad more fragile, but usable. A second life.

8. There are so many ways to store rubber bands: in a box or envelope or any containing vessel, in baskets (as we do), on long rods either sticking up from a desk or out from vertical surface. One can even keep rubber bands rolled up in a ball. Indeed, there are those for whom this is not just a practical thing but a hobby or work of art.

9. In an irony not lost on the consortium of rubber-band producers (there must be some such organization somewhere), rubber bands have supplanted the fuzzy, slightly elastic, so-called “stocking tops” as the binder of choice for home-delivered newspapers … just as newspapers are taking a nosedive into oblivion. Millions of such band/paper pairings occur, still, to this day, every year..

10. A rubber band can be a terrifically annoying, almost non-musical musical instrument. Stretch, pluck – twang/plunk. Over and over.

11. Without a rubber band, there would be no paddle-ball. From one’s personal perspective, this is either a benefit or an indictment.

12. Unlike paper clips, staples, paper clasps and other such metallic binding products, a box of rubber bands if accidentally dumped on the floor will not make a sound that will draw the attention of the person whose desk you have raided to “borrow” such items. Rubber bands are willfully complicit in all crimes.

13. They may be soft, bendable, twistable, squeezable, roll-up-able – and, yet, they can really sting when you’ve had one snap against your skin. And as easily breakable as they are, put them in the array of braces on your teeth, and they not only have the strength to reduce an overbite but can also cause a great amount of soreness and pain and headache, not to mention embarrassment. All from those tiniest of rubbery squiggles.

14. Keep them away from animals; they have appeal to all creatures and you don’t want  any to end up in a digestive tract.

Rubber bands are, at this point, part of our genetic make-up. They are without affect or personality but there is a placeness to their presence in our everyday world, and by their very nature, functionally, they create placeness by limiting and encircling and defining, determinedly and yet forgivingly. If they were not around, it would be a harsh and rigid place with only paper clips, staples, clasps and the unyielding like.