Meditation on Assumed Purpose and Intent, 1 of 4

Imagine a wooden bowl. A nice wooden bowl. The kind that's finished real nice, smooth and polished. Not something you would put a salad in, but a nice bowl like you would get, either from an upscale store, or even from the craftsman directly.

Now imagine a perfectly domed lid on this bowl. It fits just right, and when you take off that lid close to your ear, it has that perfect sound of what it sounds like when you take off a lid.

Yeah, that sound.

Now imagined that same bowl, with the lid on. The lid now is not removable. The bowl and the lid are one. There is trim between the lid and bowl that would suggest a lid-bowl situation, but a tug on the ornate object at the top that strongly suggests a handle, bears no proof of this.

Now we have a curious object.

It sits with so much intent and purpose, as if it has some spiritual significance. You can almost imagine the inside, that it holds something very valuable. But to find out what is inside, if anything is, would damage and destroy what it is.

My friend Ann found a piece of oak one day on her ranch. She knows a master wood craftsman, and she gave the wood to him, thinking he could make something really neat out of it.

He returned to her this object.

When she showed it to me, I just fell apart laughing at this thing. So much purpose, so much intent, finely crafted, but for no apparent purpose.

After I picked myself up off the floor(I find odd things very funny), I continued to admire the bowl, and really appreciate it as a fine work of art, which is what it is.

Ann was surprised by my reaction, she was a bit perturbed that he hadn't made anything more useful than that.

I expressed my appreciation for the creation, and expressed the contradiction that it represented, and how only a true craftsman could make something so refined and impractical.

Assumed purpose and intent.