Discarded Monster

The Blossom Monster Sculpture (last year, after I had just made it)

Last year, for a cherry blossom viewing party, I laboriously built a human sized blossom monster out of papier-mâché.  But what does one do with a blossom monster when the party is over and the blossoms have fallen?  I really meant to throw him away. Yet, somehow, whenever I went to discard him, something else always came up.  He was lurking in a different part of the garden..or it was not garbage day. There was always and excuse to save the fluorescent monster, no matter how threadbare he got.

But winter was not kind to him: he had sunk to the ground and his legs were coming off. One of his glitter lantern eyes was gone. It really was time for him to go (plus I made a new group of blossom monsters to celebrate this year’s cherry blossoms).  So I had to toss the poor art creature (a fate which will seem instantly familiar to arts professionals).

However, once I threw him in the garbage he gained his creative fulfillment. Indeed the pathos of the discarded monster was quite moving.  His last act was his finest and now I will forever think of him like the maimed protagonist of a Caravaggio religious painting, with divine light shining on his fallen countenance.

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