American Stonehenge

Some thoughts on this wild article while reminded of this.

Beneath the clearly inscribed mission of the Georgia Guidestones - to provide the lone survivors of some not-too-far-off apocalypse with the central tenets to rebuild a civilization razed - there seems to be a secondary purpose.  To be a monument to monuments, I think.  A gravestone for all and a gravestone to end all.

For in its meticulous planning, twenty years in the making, it is difficult to imagine its anonymous designers - “a group of Americans who seek the Age of Reason” - opting for mere convenience in selecting the Guidestones’ home in Elberton.  For time was not an issue (except for the impending doom).  Nor money (slabs so tall cost quite some coin).  Secrecy, yes (although sealing loose lips didnt seem a problem).  Point is: they could have had their pick from any amber waves of grain, but in seeking reason, they reasoned for Elberton: “the Granite Capital of the World.”

To erect a monument for a post-apocalyptic world.  To engrave upon it commandments as divisive as they are universal.  To drop off the face of the earth even before it has been unveiled.  That’s one thing.

To monument for monuments.  To contract the city richest in monument-matter (self-proclaimed) to build a monument to outlast all monuments (self-supposed).  To then reappropriate it as a symbol of civic pride, another roadside attraction.  Graniteville’s tourist economy quarried from rock.  To build an object out of the idea to justify the idea, for it and from it.  Well, that’s just plain American.

A tautological monument.  Built by an unsolved mystery to commemorate a suddenly, without warning event.  An epitaph to ATM machines and PIN numbers. A gravestone to the Mississippi River and Cheese Quesadillas, the La Brea Tar Pits.  Here lies: the Great-River River, the Cheese Cheesy-Thing.  The Tar Tar Pits are six-feet deep.

An eerie big apple molded from the pulp of an entire New York harvest is resting, waxed skin shining, in a desolate Times Square.  A twenty-ton bagel is nourishing the hunger pangs of a future dystopia, what with all the fat in the shmear.  Los Angeles is assembling a forty-story palm tree from fronds and coconuts, a Noah’s Arc shellacked in Bannana Boat, to shade survivors from a ruthless sun.  We’re grating the A-Listers against the rough-hewn edges of Swarovski-encrusted cellphones, pouring the shredded remains into the belly of a satellite, setting the urn in orbit.  If the dust has settled from the fallout and the sky has finally cleared, perhaps some hapless wanderer will mistake its path across the horizon for a shooting star.  Let’s call it a stellar one.