It's A Carrot

At the tender age of 16, I adopted Waiting For Godot as my bible. I interpreted the scene wherein Estragon asks Vladimir for a carrot as a statement, perhaps a parody, about desire and motivation.

In my 40s, i leaped from bed each morning, often as early as 3 a.m. The "carrot" was contemporary art.

Sunset

My days of leaping are past and motivation is a ridiculous term. Now, with each awakening, I sometimes find some enthusiasm. If I contemplate meaning, there's wonder at the incomprehensible unknown, sprinkled, maybe, with some curiosity: What chance circumstance might occur today to inflect my psyche? 

The spectrum of my emotions continues to expand as love, in its myriad manifestations, deepens.

Mowing my way through a bag of carrots, I tossed the stub in the general direction of infinity. It caught on the wire. Jung is chuckling.

Fully Self-actualized

At age 16 I attended a school in Boulder, Colorado for high-school dropouts. One of my fellow students was the son of Vivian Mercier, a scholar of Samuel Beckett's work, esp the play Waiting For Godot.

My first read was that year and while on LSD. I was struck by Estragon's reply to Vladimir when asked how was the carrot. Estragon's reply was, "It's a carrot." While many critics cite this exchange as Beckett's allusion to homosexuality, I interpreted it as a Zen-like observation that a carrot is NOT a pseudo penis, but simply a carrot. (I recall a similar analogy when someone commented about a cigar. The smoker replied by saying it wasn't a standin for a "dick," at all, but, in fact, a fine cigar.)

I adopted the phrase and later, when I became an art dealer, it morphed into the carrot on a stick - when dangled in front of their face -  used to motivate mules. Discarding the stick, I saw the carrot as an ineffable ideal that inspired me to leap from my bed each morning, eager to extol and expound on the beauties of the art I had for sale. The concept sustains me to this day.

The mule no longer plays a role and I've returned to the carrot itself, in the ether of a starry void. Michelle Cook's depiction completes Phoebe's exterior embellishments.

Carrots & Cats

In my youth I attended a school in Boulder, Colorado for high-school dropouts. One of my classmates, the son of Vivian Mercier, a scholar of Waiting For Godot, introduced me to the play.

There are many interpretations of the scene in which Estragon asks Vladamir for a carrot. After Vladamir gives it to him Estragon takes a bite. Then, while dangling it by its greens, he comments, "I'll never forget this carrot."  When Estragon asks, "How is it?" Vladimir replies, "It's a carrot."

For the next 25 years (I was 16 when I first read it) Vladimir's answer served as the existential answer; it is what it is. (Much has been made of the homosexual inferences which, blatant as it is, had to be an expression of Beckett cynically proffering a titillation factor.)

Regardless, my next iteration was to the carrot-and-the-stick. As THE PRIME MOTIVATOR, the idea contributed to the naming of my art dealership: IAC Contemporary Art. IAC stands for It's A Carrot. The carrot in this case being: Contemporary Art. It was, for nearly ten years, my raison d'etre and livelihood. It still serves as a major source of delight.

Later I did away with the stick and just saw the carrot as floating in the cerulean.

So you can imagine my response when I pulled into an RV park and saw this vehicle.

And on the back...

They said they had some orange paint and somehow the idea came to them. They also have five cats that roam free when they're camped.

It's a Jungian thing....perhaps?