Merideth quotes an article about obos on Graceful Presence. The sentence that struck me most deeply:
The obos merely says, "I was here."
I wonder why we humans so often want to leave our mark? To know that our lives weren't in vain? To in some way make ourselves immortal? Perhaps, but why do people think it matters?
As an architect and ceramicist, I specialize in the semi-permanent. Some part of my work will probably endure past the end of my life. I'm not sure that doing so is of any importance to me, creating a lasting memory of myself. If I might ask a favor of the universe, it would be that the things I make are enjoyed for however long they exist.
I idly wonder, staring out the window, if making things somehow captures a part of our souls, as some cultures have (do?) believe about the soul-capturing properties of film, if ties to those objects might keep us from moving on, requiring the destruction of any of our memories in order to keep going. Move on to what? If the concept becomes a fantasy novel, then you'll know.
There's probably some pearl of wisdom in there about how attachment to stuff keeps one from experiencing life, even moving on with the living of life as we know it.
Even architecture and ceramics will develop, most likely, an anonymity over time; somebody made this, but whom?
I like the simplicity and instant anonymity of the obos. Finding one is a reminder that somebody has been there before and that we are not alone.
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7 comments:
I think that the people that take so much effort in their lives to leave their mark must not understand their oneness with everything else, because if they did, they would know they are part of everything and their mark is everywhere.
ummm... I was not here.
Travis, thanks, heartening and elegant.
Dan, me neither! Ummm... wait yes I was!
One must recognize that there are three forms of immortality:
1. Spiritual
2. Biological
3. Historical
Number 2 is all too common - most people have children. Number 3 is rarer but is craved psychologically because it affirms the ego. Number 1 is promised to us after death, but is loathed by the mind and those with egos. Ironically, it may be the most common of the three and the most "real". I used to confuse it with Enlightenment but the two are different. Everyone is already immortal if we are spiritual beings in physical bodies. It's just that each of us is in different levels of wakefulness.
Now, if the first one is a lie, then the third one certainly is. Time will erase all traces of any individual given a long enough interval. That leaves the second one, but that one, too, is ultimately a lie in a sense, because species either die or evolve to something else. Genes are the individual bits propagated biologically at the species level, not any chromosome or person.
I suppose that only the spiritual then is real, because nothing else really is, but it is so far beyond common experience and every day living as to be meaningless to most people, except those who are self aware, or who desire to inquire about such things.
Julie,
You've blown my mind!
I wonder if DNA (our collective DNA especially) is a marker that says everyone was here?
Blessings,
Kevin
John - accurate logical analysis, as always. ;-)
Kevin - glad you enjoyed that. I immediately thought of other markers of others' presence - but, like DNA, most of them weren't deliberate actions made to leave a mark. However, I'm definitely willing to run with the concept of DNA as evidence of our collective existence!
Bones enable resurrection, burn them bones, no coming back, nowhere to come to, so take that up a notch, to idols and images, and consider, if the image captures a piece of your soul, your soul has to keep coming back to it as long as it exists, in which case one is stuck in time.
It is hard being an artist.
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