angle of repose (n): the steepest angle at which a sloping surface formed of a particular loose material is stable.
I couldn’t resist lying down on Andy Goldworthy’s epic work, Wood Line, when we walked along it last Saturday. I am on vacation, a time of rest and relaxation, so I thought I would practice a little.
I wish I had stayed there longer. It was a perfect afternoon.
And since that afternoon I have thought that, had I done so, I might have just slipped away, the angle of my “loose material” overwhelming my repose.
Goldsworthy only creates that which will eventually return to the earth.
I think that’s what was happening to me, lying there even briefly. I felt pulled into myself, a jumble of loose material wanting to settle and be settled, wanting to reconnect to known and knowable things.
And yet, it was not to be. And I was up and walking again before I could slip away.
How necessarily, how painfully human.
Wood Line by Andy Goldsworthy – San Francisco
