The Sculptor Converses with his Medium
The Sculptor was still young, mustachioed. He’d been commissioned by the aging leader of an ancient and noble race of endangered natives to sculpt the world’s largest sculpture in the hills that were black.
In the hills that were black: crooked teeth dark rock jutting out diagonally amidst vertical green pines. There the Sculptor found a mountain. “My father was an amateur boxer. I left home when I was 16. Working on the docks, I at times drew the little doodles,” the Sculptor said to the mountain. “You will be my medium. From you I will carve the largest sculpture in the world.”
The mountain said, “I already am a sculpture.”
The Sculptor set up an oil-cloth tent on a wood platform in the foothills of the mountain that was to be his medium. In the corner of the tent was a potbelly stove. The stove had a chimney that came out in the corner of the oil-cloth tent’s slanted roof. The oil cloth tent was the Sculptor’s home.
The Sculptor said to his medium, “From you I will carve a sculpture of a once great fearless leader, to prove to the world that great leaders had existed. Great leaders had come from an ancient race of noble natives, a timeless people who roamed humbly through these hills that are black. From you,” the Sculptor said to his medium, “I will carve the once great fearless leader atop a horse.”
The mountain said, “I already am that. I already am all of that.”
“From you I will carve a leader so heroic,” the Sculptor said to his medium, “he could not have been real. From you I will carve a leader so heroic that stories of his heroics are so widespread and great, that the leader has been reborn mythical and god-like.”
The mountain replied, “you are wasting your time.”
“You, my mountain. You, my medium. You will be the largest sculpture in the world. A sculpture that will not be completed in my lifetime. A sculpture that will take many lifetimes to complete. A sculpture that may not ever be complete. But in sculpting you, my medium, will be proof that imaginations imagining great things will keep greatness alive.”
The mountain sighed and rolled over and fell asleep, and in its sleep mumbled, “I’m no one’s medium,” to the surrounding hills that were black.
For the the sculpture to get sculpted the Sculptor accepted donations of funds and donations of equipment, but uncompromisingly refused to accept donations from the government. For the sculpture to be realized in its purest form, the means by which it was realized had to come from the people.
In his oil-cloth tent in the hills that were black, the Sculptor’s early years were difficult. Progress on his sculpture was slow. The Sculptor spent several months cutting switchbacks of footpaths up the mountainside to his medium.
A jackhammer was donated.
A crank start compressor was donated. The crank start compressor was very old, and operated with infrequent reliability. The Sculptor spent several months installing piping along the switchback foot paths. He ran an air hose from the crank start compressor up the mountainside. The air hose powered his jackhammer.
The Sculptor grew out a wild and scraggly salt and pepper beard, befitting both reclusive mountain men and passionate sculptors.
Most of the year in the hills that were black, the weather did not permit. But weather permitting, the Sculptor left his oil-cloth tent before sunrise. He crank started the crank start compressor. Once crank started, the compressor went, WHIR-RHUM-RHUM-RHUM WHIR-RHUM-RHUM-RHUM. The Sculptor wrapped his left arm clinging around the donated jackhammer; holding it tight against his paunch, he lugged it along the trek through his switchback footpaths up his mountain to his medium. Down below the crank start compressor went WHIR-RHUM-RHUM-RHUM WHIR-RHUM-RHUM-RHUM. When days were good and he arrived at his medium, the Sculptor connected his jackhammer to the air hose and went to work chiseling into his medium with the jackhammer. The jackhammer went ER-KA! ER-KA! ER-KA! ER-KA! ER-KA! ER-KA! ER- chiseling into the medium.
The mountain would reply, “just my moment passed. I sighed and stood. Your years have passed and you are getting older. In all your tedious work of your fragile life, not even hardly my stubble has been cleared away.”
The crank start compressor went WHIR-RHUM-RHUM-RHUM WHIR-RHUM-RHUM-RHUM. The jackhammer went, ER-KA! ER-KA! ER-KA! and the sculptor sculpted into his medium.
Sometimes, weather permitting, the Sculptor crank started the infrequently reliable crank start compressor. Arm wrapped around the donated jackhammer, clutching it tight to his paunch, he lugged it along on his trek through the footpath cut in switchbacks up the mountainside to his medium. On good days as he went, the crank start compressor went WHIR-RHUM-RHUM-RHUM WHIR-RHUM-RHUM-RHUM until the sculptor made it up to his medium and began chiseling and sculpting with the donated jackhammer that went ER-KA! ER-KA! ER-KA! But more often than not, as the crank start compressor was old and infrequently reliable, along his trek lugging the donated jackhammer up the switchback footpaths cut into the mountainside, down below the crank start compressor would go WHIR-RHUM-RHUM-RHUM WHIR-RHUM-RHUM-RHUM WHIRRR . . . -RHHUUMM . . . -RHU- . . . CLUNK-KA CLUNK-KA CLUNK-KA CLUNK . . . CLUNK . . . CLUNK and then come to an abrupt stop. Sometimes this would happen a quarter of the way, sometimes halfway up his switchback footpaths in the mountainside to his medium. The Sculptor would sigh and think along the lines of “Oh my.” He’d set the jackhammer at his ankles and begin the trek down to again crank start the infrequently reliable crank start compressor.
Mountain goats stood surely on the steep sheer mountainsides. Startlingly white against the hills that were black, their white tufts of beards hung from the chins and swung in the wind and bounced from their lower jaws as the mountain goats chewed stalks and grasses sprouting from the black rocks. With their sad deep eyes, unsettling and dark in their white fur faces, the mountain goats watched the Sculptor. They watched him crank start the compressor. They watched him lug the jackhammer up the switchback footpaths. The mountain goats saw when the crank start compressor clunked and stopped.
“Hello,” the mountain goats would say when they saw the Sculptor. “Hello,” the mountain goats would say as they watched him trek down to re-crank start the crank start compressor a 2nd time or a 3rd time. “Hello,” the mountain goats would say as they watched him chisel and sculpt.
The Sculptor would sometimes stop his sculpting to lean against the rock side of his medium and look out over the hills that were black. The Sculptor would see the mountain goats. The Sculptor would feel the darkness of their sad wise eyes upon him.
“Hello,” the mountain goats would say.
“I like those goats,” the Sculptor would say. “I hope those goats will be my friends.”
The mountain would say to the Sculptor, “They are goats. They are the kind of goats called mountain goats. They’ve been here a while. They don’t have switchbacks or footpaths. They don’t have compressors or jackhammers.”
The Sculptor was now not an old man, but a man inching past his prime. With a sculpture that would take many lifetimes to complete, whose other lifetimes would run out in the sculpture’s completion?
A local girl of the hills that were black, her ancestors had come from the Netherlands 3 generations back. She had intense eyes the color of ice, and a strong oval forehead crested and framed by yellow hair so pale it was almost white. Her ancestors had trickle traversed the Northern expanses of America across the great lakes regions. They finally settled, having fallen in love with the jutted out diagonal black stone teeth amidst the vertical green pines in the hills that were black.
The Sculptor took her for his wife.
Through their marriage, she bore him 10 towheaded children. 5 boys and 5 girls.
Once upon a time the hills that were black and surrounding environs were considered of a sacred nature to an ancient and endangered race of noble natives. An upheaval had come upon them fast. A faceless system of order, disjointed and far-flung, but all the same promising godless freedom, dogged the noble race natives through contradicting methods of acceptance and expulsion. The new law of the land baffled the natives, who’d always considered the land was the law interpreted through omens and stones, revelations and rivers. When it was too late, it had been too late centuries ago, with a trickle then of white skin green paper upheaval, and land was looked at to be subjected to law; the law was a pragmatic puzzle woven around wealthy mens’ words. Destiny would manifest. The new populace would be free, smart, better. Not wishing to evolve with the mechanical sorcery of an uprising nation, the race of noble natives became endangered.
The noble natives had come from their fold a Great Leader. He was born in a landmark year on a landmark season of many successful horse thefts, 100 horse thefts. The Great Leader’s kinsmen were told by the new law of the land, “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.” The Great Leader was confused. What was this new law of the land? Why were the noble natives, already endangered, told to do this that way and live like that this way?
The Eastern armies came after the natives in rising clouds of prairie dust gun smoke, drunken yells, and pound-hammerings of horse hooves. The armies were mighty and loud and powerful and soulless and cold, but lacking in the charisma, cunning, and agility.
The noble native’s Great Leader knew every nook of the hills that were black and all the ins and outs of the surrounding environs. The Great Leader assembled his willing kinsmen into a rag-tag army of their own. They knew how to spring forth in assault from the blades of grass and vanish into the crevices of the rocks before the well resourced Armies of the East even knew what carnage had befallen them. The Great Leader was wise. He was wise never to overestimate the enemy, and wiser still to never underestimate the enemy. The Great Leader knew it was a losing battle, but a losing battle that his noble race of natives must fight.
The mighty and wealthy men far away released an edict that the Great Leader was a criminal. He could not understand why it was a crime to protect his kinsmen. The Great Leader never slept. He never slept because he was thinking too much. He’d gone alone into the blackest part of the hills that were black. He walked in circles and figure 8s up cliff faces, across rock sides, down gullies, and through creek beds.
One night there was no moon. He sat on dead pine needles. The fearless leader saw 2 owls fly over him. The 2 owls were gray. As they passed the moon came out. In the moonlight the 2 gray owls looked like they were 2 white owls. With a rustle of owl wings, the shadows fell upon the Great Leader. His enemies from the mighty Eastern armies had caught up with him. He was apprehended and captured and deposited in a jail in a fortress in a plain. He was not given a blanket. He sat in the jail for many days and nights. He was summoned from the jail to meet with one of the Eastern Army’s great generals. Then the Great Leader died.
Circumstances of his death vary by all accounts. Some tell of his death as a murder. Some tell of his death as a suicide. Some tell of his death as both. In all reports though, one thing was conclusively made clear. The Great Leader of the ancient noble race of natives was stabbed twice. Once in the heart. Once in the back.
The Sculptor was carving a sculpture in the hills that were black to memorialize the once great fearless leader. The sculpture would also memorialize the ancient race of noble natives. The Sculptor planned to sculpt the once great fearless leader of noble natives atop a horse.
Through their youth, all the Sculptor’s 10 children had their mother’s looks with silken blonde hair almost white and irises so blue they were almost transparent. The Sculptor now had many lifetimes to devote to the sculpture’s creation.
Using self-taught knowledge of geology and mineralology, timed fuses and explosions were incorporated into the sculpting of the massive medium. Reading streaks of mineral deposits and erosions in the medium, the Sculptor could gage how both may work for or against the sculpture how he envisioned it. Narrow cylindrical shafts were drilled to approximate depths in the medium. The sculptor lowered sticks of dynamite at the end of long fuses down the shafts. Once ignited, desirable amounts of rock were chiseled away from the medium.
His children were growing up and learning the trade.
The mountain sighed and imperceptibly shifted its weight and felt itself change. The decades of the Sculptor’s life passed for the mountain in a single rain drop’s drip from a blade of grass in the hillside. The mountain tried to imagine itself as a medium.
The mountain goats gingerly stepped and skipped. They chewed grass. Their white beards bobbed as they chewed. They looked on the Sculptor and his children sculpting. They watch the recent addition of theatrical explosions chiseling away the medium. “Hello,” the mountain goats said.
Many cylindrical shafts had been drilled into the mountain side. Many long fuses had been run to many sticks of dynamite. The rock looked a chocolate cake rich strawberry cream cheese in the milky sunlight.
The mountain was silent and silently refused to be addressed as a medium.
Little matter to the Sculptor. It was time to set to work sculpting.
BOOM! The medium shuddered as it was sculpted away and rubble of black rocks rained down to the foothills.
The previous Christmas the Sculptor had all 10 of his towheaded children pose for a photo in front of the Christmas tree. The 5 girls wore red velveteen. The 5 boys wore blue and green tartan.
BOOM! The dynamite sculpted at a crest. Rubble flung, broke loose as boulders.
The Sculptor’s sons and daughters had learned the trade well. His sons were better versed in the usage of technology for more precise sculpting. His daughters had become excellent accountants with surprising creativity that raised more funds and brought in more equipment.
BOOM! A rather powerful one sent an avalanche sheet of rocks Rocks ROCKS! crumbling down.
The mountain goats looked on unimpressed.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The 3 stage explosion cleared out an arch and boulders as big as battle ships went thundering down into the hills that were black.
3 of the Sculptor’s 10 children decided not to assist in the sculpting. He never liked those 3 much anyway. Then he died.
The mountain goats did not miss the Sculptor.
The mountain too, was glad to be rid of him, and relieved to no longer be addressed as a medium. It should be noted though, that the mountain was a bit perturbed the Sculptor’s children continued his work. The mountain wondered how much longer they’d keep at it.