Ball of Gold

I am blessed to know inspiring souls. From my friend, artist Thom Ross, with a photograph by Dan Frick:

"A man saw a ball of gold in the sky;
He climbed for it,
And eventually he achieved it -
It was clay.

Now this is the strange part:
When the man went to the earth
And looked again,
Lo, there was the ball of gold.
Now this is the strange part:
It was a ball of gold.
Aye, by the heavens it was a ball of gold."

--Stephen Crane

I remember this poem from sophomore high-school English and, once studied I never thought about it again.....until many many years later when I began to consider the role of myth as a component of historical truth. It was then that I recalled this poem. It is like this:

Take Wyatt Earp. In the movies he is heroic and noble etc....this is Wyatt Earp the ball of gold. Yet when we actually study who he REALLY was, Wyatt Earp, the man, he's clay like the rest of us. In our disappointment we walk away; yet when we turn back to view him, lo, he is that ball of gold.

This is why all those realistic or traditional paintings that "artists" paint are always so boring to me.....regardless of talent and technique, they are ALL paintings of clay. But when the artist backs away and gets away from the pure reality of the subject, lo, it becomes gold.

This short poem by Stephen Crane is EXACTLY what I mean.

It's exactly what I mean as well.