Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Once more, I've found some interesting things while walking my dog, Una, all of which can be loosely terms as art.

I'll start out with a drawing I found a couple doors down from my house a few weeks ago, while it was still snowing out. It was a drawing done by a child, and one of the strangest I've seen. The subject: a dying fish.

I'm not sure what drove the kid to draw this, but presumably it had something to do with the inevitable conclusion of a fish-human relationship. The drawing is actually fairly sophisticated, with an attempt at making it look three dimensional. The fish looks like it's in sad condition, drifting sideways near the bottom, bloated, with one listless eye fixed upwards.

This is why I don't like fish as pets. Any animal that gets mysterious moldy illnesses with names like "ick" is something that I don't need to get emotionally attached to.

For such a sad subject, the other side of the paper is incongruous. On one side of the folded sheet, are six cheery stars, as if the artist was grading herself on her accomplishment. Or as if it was an embellishment added before handing the drawing to a friend, who clearly didn't value it as much as the artist.

"Next time, girl, draw something living. Your dead fish pictures are creeping me out."

The second object was found near a local elementary school. It had blown against a fence and was readable when I walked by, so I plucked it off. The paper contains a series of sentences, apparently the answers to some sort of class exercise, perhaps something for English class, where the goal was to write sentences.

The first five are somewhat unremarkable, except for one spelling mistake.

1. The flowers are blooming in spring.

2. Are you leaving know?

3. I was worried about you.

4. I rolled the ball.

5. I am swimming in the pool.

The second group of five make their own sort of sense, like a found poem, a dada invention. And the best part, it involves hot magma.

1. I see lava.

2. I am wise.

3. We are positive.

4. There is litter.

5. Follow the trail.

Taken out of context, I love those sentences together. It's a zen poem, of sorts, when you look at it carefully. And then, the entire fifth grade class was enlightened.

The final found art object I collected on my block on garbage day. The funny thing is, I kept thinking on that day as I walked around town that I would find another painting that day. But I didn't find any at the houses I was passing, so I thought it was wishful thinking.

Then, a few houses away from my place, on the opposite side of the street, I saw a large canvas. On closer inspection, the painting was of a heavily stylized deer in the forest. In contrast to the deeply detailed forest background, the deer is a monolith in red. Sort of a fauvist painting, if you will, with emphasis on fields of color.

Or, of course, perhaps the painter just ran out of brown paint.

The painting had dust on the edges, as if it had either been hung or stored somewhere for a long period of time. Then somebody in the house, whether the original artist or someone else, discarded it. The painting has a basic wire hanger on the back, which I could hang right away, as soon as I move to a space with bigger walls.

I'm always fascinated by the impulse to throw away art. This just doesn't occur to me. I have boxes in my basement including writings going all the way back to elementary school. As a writer, I value creative expression and would never carelessly toss something like that.

But I guess some people don't value artistic expression as much as I do. When they tire of something, they have no qualms about tossing it in the trash. This is an attitude I don't share and don't expect I ever will.

Then again, maybe somebody in the house was getting wigged out by the red deer staring at them.

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

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