I was supposed to make a website.
I’m interested in the mundane and finding amusement in it.
People lining up for things, for instance. I wanted people to line up to see a grain of sand at the beach.
The line was partly about wanting to walk the path I walk every day without everyone getting in the way.
A white line on a road helps stop us driving into each other at 100 km/h. Metal objects, with soft, tender people inside.
On the footpath, we’re moving much more slowly and still manage to get in each other’s way. How does a bit of white paint get that much authority?
Everyone brings up the urinal. I’m more interested in Man Ray’s Gift, the iron with nails stuck to it. Two things that work on their own, put together so neither can do its job.
With the grain, there’s another problem. Whatever I picked, I could never know it was the greatest.
We use grains of sand to get our heads around the number of stars. I couldn’t inspect every grain on one beach, let alone compare them all.
There would always be another one I hadn’t looked at. I could pick the greatest by accident and never know.
William Blake wrote, “To see a world in a grain of sand.”
So what if the grain is the Earth?
One small bit of stuff among more bits of stuff than I can get my head around. Does it have to be the greatest to matter?
We’re on a planet in the Goldilocks zone, where liquid water can exist. Enough other things have gone right for us to be alive here.
And at a time when you can read this on a screen. Probably from your desk or the toilet.
I can’t rank all the other worlds. I’m glad we got this one.
I’d like us to give the grain we’re living on some of the attention we give the one in the frame.
For the gallery, we had two days and a container we couldn’t alter. I got my White Card the night before.
We attached the wall panels to a freestanding frame with cable ties. ACA Build helped put it together.
Gideon made the lights and the fifteen-second box. We’ve known each other since primary school.
Some people tried pressing the display instead of the button.
I still hadn’t finished the website.
You have observed n grains so far.