The Throckmorton Beer Tree or: Art Is Where You Find It”

On Tuesday night I started a class with my dear friend Shelly Tucker (whose blog This Eclectic Life is fabulous and you should read it.) We’re taking a class at TCU called “The Intutive Woman” and it’s a study on the early 90s book “Women Who Run With the Wolves“.

Anyone who knows either of us is sure to think that we both already know how to “run with wolves”.  Matter of fact, one of Shelly’s friends told her she should be teaching the class.  But our hopes were that we would get to spend time with one another, meet other “wildish” women, and jog our creative lives a little. Those things have already come true, so if we don’t get anything else out of the experience, we’ve gotten that.

Our assignment next week is to make a mandala, which is a sanskrit word meaning “wheel” and are often also known as “life wheels.  You can learn more and see some beautiful ones here

 So that got me to thinking about art in general, about sacred art, and specifically art where you find it.

On my way home from Throckmorton yesterday I happened to see, in the distance, a beautiful silvery tree on the side of the road.  I thought it must surely be one of those folk art trees like the famous one of of I-30 which inspired the book “The Homeless Christmas Tree“,  and which is known to countless Fort Worth commuters.

But no – after turning around and walking down the side of the highway to the little pass-over bridge, I discovered that the tree was not covered with tinsel, Christmas ornaments or yellow ribbons.  It’s covered with cans.  Some Sprites, but mostly beer of several different brands.  (And one big ugly liquor bottle)

My first reaction of course was “Oh – so HERE’S what the local kids have to do in this little bitty place”, but the truth is, it looks like more than that.  Maybe it’s not, but it looks like a beautiful piece of self-expression gone communal.  Maybe someone started it because they were a little snockered and didn’t want to have to pick up their empties,  and maybe the next person added because it seemed like a good joke, but to tell you the truth it’s really beautiful.

It’s prettier from far-away, that’s true, but aren’t most things?  Like life?  We look back upon the part of life that is gone, or the people that are gone from it and generally the memories are awash in the golden haze of time. The further away you are from this tree the more beautiful it is, shimmering in the distance.  The longer a loved one has become the more saintly they become, and the further we are from our childhood or our children’s childhood, the fonder the memories.

Art is where you find it – and so is life.

More later about wolfish women.