Hripsim Visser, Curator of Photography
Stedelijk Museum
Paulus Potterstraat 13
1071 CX Amsterdam , Nederlands
Dear Hripsimé,
Finally I've gotten around to writing the narrative which you requested regarding Ubi Lapsus which is in your museum's collection. I'm sorry that it has taken so long. A few days ago I returned from Europe and was finally able to sit down and write it.
As much as I tried to get up to Amsterdam to pay you a visit on my last trip, variables beyond my control wouldn't allow me. Maybe next year.. Europe is habit forming!
I hope that all is well with you.
Yours,
Steve
Here's the narrative:
Across the stream I spotted something which vaguely resembled an adolescent boy's dream treasure. I instinctively leaped towards it, all the while my young imagination was filling in the hidden details. During those few seconds it took to get to it I was already feeling the glory, commendations and elevated stature I was to receive among my fellow boy scouts back at the camp site. It appeared to be an Indian stone ax head; the rarest find ever. To my disappointment it was only a rounded creek stone. But as I gazed at the stone, turning it over and over in my small hands I had an idea.
Before anyone else returned, I bee-lined it back to the tent area and began chipping away at the stone with a steel tent peg and a hammer. As I was finishing its dirt and ash patina, scouts began trickling back to camp tired and empty handed from the traditional weekend search for Indian arrowheads. Everyone was in total awe of my "find", and its authenticity was never doubted. After all we were boy scouts pledged to an oath of honesty and honor, and under different circumstances my craftsmanship would have earned me a merit badge. Gradually though I felt the attention becoming excessive. It was especially hard watching the adult leaders reverently studying my ax head as if it was a sacred relic or an important anthropological discovery. It became too late to pass it off as a joke; I had crossed too far over the line and there was no return. That weekend was filled with the thrill of discovery and adventure for everyone but me. Mine was empty except for a dull knotted up feeling in my stomach, and I had to pretend to share the excitement that was felt by my fellow campers.
Over time the ax head found its way into my family's great old Pennsylvania Dutch stone barn and I gradually forgot about the incident. It seemed that everything of significance in my life eventually got stored in the barn. I accumulated an enormous, chronologically stratified mass which included toys, comic books, saddles, riding boots, motorcycle parts, electric guitars, and even my early paintings, sculptures, and photographs. In another room was an even larger quantity of my parent's family heirlooms and antique furniture.
A few winters ago my mother left the cold north and came to visit with me, my wife and daughter in Miami . The telephone rang, and she answered the long distance call from Pennsylvania . She screamed, "The barn is burning!" Fifteen hundred miles away, there was nothing we could do but cry. She and I took the next available flight north and then we rented a car. Finally as we drove down the dirt lane we could see the dark ruins silhouetted against the cold gray sky, standing in the wind swept bareness of the winter fields. All that remained were three charred stone walls, melted pools of glass where there were once window panes, and thick deposits of charcoal covered haphazardly with charred timbers, all being lightly dusted by swirling snowflakes. For two days I sadly poked around in the thick ashes with a metal rod, hoping to find something which could have survived the inferno. Little by little I accumulated a handful of identifiable blackened and burned trinkets. Then I hit something hard and larger than before, and excitedly I dug down wondering what I had found. It was amazing that after more than thirty five years, the same wave of guilt and queasiness overcame me the moment I laid eyes upon the stone ax head.
Upon returning to Miami , I constructed a wooden box for the ax head and carved UBI LAPSUS (Latin: where have I fallen ) into the wood. I set the assemblage on fire, and watched as it slowly burned itself out. Using the charred remains I made the photograph Ubi Lapsus .
Stephen Althouse July 24,1997