Smoke in the Garden

One of my favorite things to do when I lived in Denver was go to the Three Kings Bar by myself. There was often live music and I greatly enjoyed standing with a drink in had watching the evening go by. How we experience and enjoy peace in our lives is unique to one’s self, yes we all do similar things and find community within those spaces but the individual raison d'etre for our participation is never really known. I love to fish by myself and with a buddy of mine, I go for action he goes for the big ones but we both enjoy the rock of the kayak and the friendly competition. But by myself I get lost in the act of mindfulness, the waters flow, the wind in the trees, the obstinate fish swimming before you blowing raspberries at your efforts to trick them. That’s the kind of awareness I would experience when going out alone, being present to the passage of time seeing the smiles and the banter, feeling the rumble of metal (this was a metal bar), the rhythmic movement of people feeling it, the chaos of the decorations that when taken as whole was peaceful. The great beauty of humanity comes from our presence with each other, the joy of existence within things that have no true purpose other than it is what humans do. Peace and acceptance over a shared love of a space, what beauty it is and I wish it had more permanence in this world.

So that is where the idea for this story came from. As I have worked more on Lucy and Quinn I have found myself dwelling on the larger world and one of verdant cyberism came to mind. The thought of an entire section of a city being one massive garden intrigued me, and was a better setting for a different story I had been mulling over for awhile. One of the best things about going out alone is sometimes you just meet people and share a moment so unique that it is never again repeated.

There is great wonder in the momentary and some would argue it is essential for something to be so. I one time had a man pay for a cigarette with an original poem, I met a band and spent the night with them dancing into the late hours of the morn, I ended up in an air guitar completion on a whim, and have had many a conversation with people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. I have never seen any of these people again, nor will I ever, but they all hold a special place in my memory. So I set out to create a work to celebrate this.

This work is not done, as the story is still being written, but I did some art tests of the characters and people they will meet and thought them worth sharing. Together they will discover one of The Gardens great secrets and find a connection they have been searching for.

There will be more coming.