Dregs. Leftover (cocoa) bubbles in a cup. Satisfied traces in a swig-wake. Just accidental patterns? Or is there art(fulness) in what you leave behind? Our legacy of consumption isn’t merely a hot button issue. Every slag story is also about nourishment. There’s more here than a byproduct: it’s also the proof of savoured pudding.
Historically, our social, political, and cultural leaders each drank deeply from the nourishing fountains of their time: family (or lack thereof), place, inner persona, outward pomp. So what’s left in the cup after that final, satisfying gulp? What can you see in that circle (or square) of hot chocolate, tea, beer, mineral or pulp? What crystallizes into view at the bottom of everything?
I really like the layers in this image. Each swallow, having lowered the liquid level by requisite millimeters, has made its own foamy cocoa-mark on the mug’s vertical gradient. But what really makes this a geological experience is the apparent crackle of dried mud at the bottom. This is truly a draught-turned-drought.
Picture these fissures slowly forming: the mug left on a desk in the wee hours of the morning, witness to the weak whittling of a man with a deadline. The mug (weeks later) still sitting tight, now lost behind stacks of paper, succumbing to dehydration. The porcelain polish finally peering through the barren bark. Abandoned. And yet: what a vigorous life this creature is privy to!
What really makes this a geological experience is the apparent crackle of dried mud at the bottom.
And that’s the humanity of it. What I see in the dregs is evidence of hands and heads and hearts of all sorts. And there are all sorts! The engaged and employed as well as the arrogant and empty. Some dregs commemorate brain cells agonizing over determinism and technology, over diamonds and skulls, over Kermit the frog. Others mark a desperate drowning.
- Which particular chamomile leaves induced the necessary calm to craft the great nonviolent social movements?
- What kind of sweet residual communion wine might mark the aftermath of ritual bliss?
- What foamy remnants of one too many beers might have observed the murder of a spouse?
Dregs are a kind of leveller. We’re all thirsty for something, and have all known both satisfaction and its opposite. Many a refueling (or remushing) of mind has had to do with the draining of a draught. What we end up doing with those legacies is up to us.
Beyond the flourishing finality of a deep, guttural “Ahhhh”, and the loud heavy-fisted plunking of pewter on hardwood, our tales seem often to trickle away in dishwater. Even heirloom china, carefully handled (in and out of its crystal-cabinet home) is all too often found in shattered remnants on the floor.
But the human vessel?
At the bottom of our own earthen souls, we seems to have every lingering intention to endure.