…Now available for $3.99.
Trust me, this piece has the ENTIRE experience of southwestern life in one small, blessedly-sealed container. The sand really is that orange, the wildlife really is that stunted, and there really is a strangely rippled, mysterious wall of force that completely surrounds you, isolating you from the world and the blessed gifts of water, air, and Miley Cyrus.
I respect the general line of thought the artist was going with. Terrariums are really cool, and cactuses don’t need a lot of water, so, sound design principles all around. Where they faltered, or perhaps expressed their genius, was in gluing the sand together. Brilliant! An eternal, perfect Santa Fe Sunset of orange and yellow, preserved for all time, and climbing up the side of the cactus like a slime mold. It’s so beautiful. So beautiful the cactus tried to escape all the beauty, climbing out of its pot and beating itself senseless–in that special “cactus” sense of the word “senseless”–before succumbing to exposed roots, fatal levels of glue, and all the regrettable side effects of living in a tightly, inviolably sealed glass brick.
Let this be a lesson to us all!
Goodwill on 2222 and Lamar, Austin
One Response to “The Desert’s Stark Beauty”
A friend of mine misread stark as shark. Which immediately made me think of “The desert’s shark beauty.” I’m picturing a shark in wig frantically applying moisturize so it can remain pretty