Image: Jim Denevan @ jimdenevan.com

I have a deep admiration for artists who create works that are intentionally impermanent. The images to be washed away by the next tide or the scuffle of feet, the sculptures that won’t withstand the next gust of wind or pelting of rain. I used to make boats of driftwood and dune grass and send them down the eddies of tidal streams, hoping they would safely navigate the Pacific surf that awaited them and knowing that they wouldn’t. The satisfaction is in the making, the thrill is in the release.

There are the photographs that lend some sense of human history to a passing creation, a memory of something we didn’t see for ourselves and which was gone the same day the image was captured. I can tell you about the moment I tasted that initial sip of Veuve Clicquot champagne the past weekend, the oceanic fizz, the slight spray of gas released by the bubbles as they gasped out at the surface and against my nose, the dry walnut flavor mixed with a heady tang, the falling snow outside the window and the blue moonlight on the mountaintop – but that instant was over almost as quickly as it began. The sea washed over Denevan’s sand spheres above – when? Does it matter? Wouldn’t we just glut ourselves and move on in bored surfeit if we could go back to the same moment again and again?

This is my long-winded way of saying thank you to the magazine Stealing Time for publishing a piece of mine.

I am enjoying the bubbles before the return of the tide.

Andy Goldsworthy: “Slate arch made over two days, fourth attempt” via uclblueash.edu
My favorite part about this? The ‘fourth attempt’ in the title.