Our house is made of repurposed things. Old siding flipped over became our living room ceiling. Cedar fence planks became part of our kitchen ceiling. A log by the side of La Tuna Canyon Road became both our coffee bar and our mantle. A pallet carrying slate became our medicine cabinet. And a prop for a disco scene in a movie became a trellis for our wandering grape vine.
Maybe that's why I love this crocodile from the Noah's Ark exhibit at the Skirball Center. (Click on image to enlarge.) It started as a violin case, violin, ladies black glove, and a tire, and together, against all odds, it became a crocodile.
Maybe that's what I love about the idea of being repurposed. The old and unnecessary becomes the new and essential. Or at the least, the new and surprising. Maybe that's why the crocodile has me thinking about how, most likely, we're all being repurposed within every moment. Snippets of our lives we thought unworkable and ready for the blue bin, are shaped into something of wonder and glory. Thoughts that looked tired and worn are shocked into originality. Memories crushed and cramped in a dusty brain are fitted to receive a crown.
Just when we think we've got the pieces of our lives computed and sorted, we see it all being reconsidered, rearranged, repurposed. We don't have any choice but to stop and stare. There's nothing we can do about it. We are witnesses to our own new purpose. And that of the universe. We're all becoming crocodiles.
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