random searching

found art


"There is reward simply in the act of finding something, regardless of its value. The coin we pick up in the street means far more to us than the twenty we already have in our pocket. All these are manifestations of a deep-seated urge we have to search for things -- an urge we owe to our scavenging forefathers."
(from Omnivore, by the great Lyall Wilson)

There is pleasure in pursuits of all sorts. That pleasure is tempered, of course, or ignited, by a looming sense of dread, if the object that we’re searching for, even if we’re not sure exactly what it is, eludes us just a little too long. Nothing is more frustrating than searching without finding. And nothing is more exciting than finding without searching.

I’m sure you’ve seen it -- someone glued a coin, a euro I think, to a cobbled step somewhere in the heart of Fira. I’ve stopped myself to pick it up, many times, only to be confronted with my own predictability, greed, impulsiveness, pride. It all happens in a flash, that irresistible flash of gold. It’s funny. I saw someone doing the same trick in America (maybe I saw it on TV) with a dollar bill. It was lying on the ground, in a park or some other public place, and as soon as someone would bend down to pick it up, the trickster would pull it by an invisible thread. Such a shock and a laugh. But what should we do in that case? “Finders keepers” is, sometimes, perfectly just and fair.

I was taught that it’s bad luck to pick up a coin unless it’s face-up. Maybe the law of averages, and a little superstition, can keep greed to a minimum. I’ve got a number of things I feel guilty about finding (and/or keeping) -- a silver bracelet, a small plastic dog with an oversized head, a tiny glass duck, a whole collection of coins. The search, however pleasurable, is not the goal in itself. To be satisfied, you have to find something, and sometimes a way of keeping it.