Monday, July 6, 2009

Book of Mud






You will be hard pressed to find anything that does not come from mud. Try. Everything you are wearing was grown in mud, or grazed on grass growing from mud. Your homes and buildings came ultimately from mud. Okay, maybe gold and some other prima donnas from the periodic table have their own shtick, but chances are they spent some time in mud.

Gold prospectors find flakes or nuggets in good old garden variety mud. Even diamonds are compressed mud. Basically.

"What about meteorites?", you ask. Oh, I don't know...maybe someone else's mud.

The writers from antiquity tell us, "The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground." Dust plus water makes mud. What water? Maybe God's tears because he knew our pain to come.

My parents often recited this bit from Langdon Smith's poem, Evolution,

When I was a tadpole and you were a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.

Photo by coolest photographer I know (and awesome brother): Steven Dean Davis

6 comments:

jesse joshua watson said...

yeah, Steve is a badass! I love his photography. And that one in particular has been around since the Paleozoic time. Or at least since Ponch and John were cruising the 405 in their prime. (did the 405 exist back then?)

BJW said...

Ponch and John, what do y'all know about Ponch and John?

I was BORN off the 405 fool. That's how I roll. Da da deh duhhhhh...

sing it brother, I know you know it.

BJW said...

Cool picture dad. Sorry your boys have invaded your blog. Woop. There goes your credibility, right down the drain...

Da da deh duhhhhh...

Richard Jesse Watson said...

Always a pleasure to hear from you two bright and interesting gorillas. You are the best sons a silver back could ever have.

tlchang said...

You are so poetic in your writing as well as your art...

(someone else's mud! ha!)

Richard Jesse Watson said...

Thank you Tara. Back at ya. Seeing your sketches has brought me back to my sketch books.