A Vulnerable Medium

We went for a walk on the beach a couple hours after sundown last night, and I discovered that the Koala had been reduced to a sandpile. Sometimes this happens naturally. This time there were adult footprints in it that indicated someone indulged the urge to stomp it.

To be fair, I can never tell whether the stomping happened after a collapse, where someone figures, "it's fallen down, I can stomp it!" or before where someone figures "This is clearly something someone spent a lot of time on, I can stomp it!". In this case, though, I suspect the latter.

While to some, I guess, stomping a sand castle is a guilty pleasure, it breaks a cardinal rule of each etiquette:

UNLESS YOU BUILT IT, DON'T STOMP IT.

I have to admit, it does dissappoint me a little when this happens, but the vulnerability of the work is a part of the medium. After I build it, it becomes a sort of performance piece where I watch (sometimes from a nearby chair, other times from the balcony of our condo 200 yards away) people walk by and react to it. There's the nervous times when the preschool boy ahead of his family notices it first and I wonder it he'll stomp it before his parents can stop him. I watch people think about touching it, wonder it it's really just sand, but usually they don't do it. If they do, there's nothing I can do about it, though. It's vulnerable and delicate, and depends on people's better nature for survival.

One time, I was trying to make the three monkeys (see no evil... etc). I had the first one done and the second one nearly done. There were a group of teenage boys who hung around and watched me work. One in particular asked a lot of questions and was very interested.

At one point, while I was finishing Monkey #2, he reached over and just lightly touched the head of Monkey #1. I guess he was curious what it would feel like. As soon as he touched it, the entire thing collapsed into a pile of sand. While I liked the monkey, the look on this poor kid's face was priceless! He just stood there with his jaw dropped. He was horrified. What could he say? I let him hang there for a second or two, and then burst out laughing. After all, getting upset wouldn't bring it back, so why not laugh? He much have apologized 40 times before leaving. Wherever he is, I bet his friends are still reminding him of this.

As much work as I put into one of these, it only lasts a day or so. It reminds me of how, from God's perspective, almost nothing we build will last. Our buildings, companies, art, will at some point be as gone as yesterday's sand sculpture. The only things that are truly built to last are the things we build in our souls and the souls of others. As Paul said, "... these three remain: Faith, Hope, and Love. "

While the monkey I made was long gone, I will always carry the memory of the look on that young man's face, and hopefully wherever he is, he'll carry the memory of a day where he made a dumb mistake with catastrophic results, and instead of getting upset, I chose to laugh about it.