His elements were meant to be

steel lime silica

to occasionally dally in

vulcanized rubber.

Never profane himself with

lowly wood which

comes from living things (barbaric!)

inconstant and unpredictable

stone and metal are never rude enough

to be exceptional

they have published yields

tension, shear, torque, compression

written down on paper

dependable

Why would you want to be

more than average? Average is the furthest place

from boundaries, from edges.

Ask any one who builds

an edge is the weakest part

of any structure

The edge belongs to the artist

to the mason it

is the enemy, a

four letter word.

Bruce' first Art class was meant to fulfill a mandated humanities elective.

The course exists for two reasons: to ensure that the uncouth get a fraction of exposure to culture during their brief station, and second to pay the art staff who might otherwise be exposed to the free market and thusly insolvent.

Momentum still carries Bruce towards Engineer. A weekly study group assembles, and Bruce's classmates become more than strangers. Mathematics more and more overtakes English as the language of his life. Meanwhile colored pencil week leaves Bruce uninspired. Carved linoleum ink printing is downright play-time insulting. Like generations of intemperate collegiates before him, Bruce begins to conspire to achieve the bare minimum. It is far easier to court an artist's political agenda than their technical proficiency, so by midterms Bruce had secured a safe passing mark through brazen theft of midcentury 'Beat' script, and turn of the century 'Ashcan' themography.

Safety. Security. But then Clay. The teacher wheels it into the class in a lumpen block on top of parchment and a wobbly handcart. Aluminum-heavy, phyllosilicate raw with base oxides and nude silica; clay is the inflection point. For the class, for his life. His fingers grip, shape, contour a molded geometry in free space. Mass and volume the missing ingredients to personal transformation. He takes to it fiercely, and within the month he is visiting the studio after hours. Within a second, he discovers the metallurgy studio.

Another week, and he discovers brass – the love he never knew.

In late May Bruce takes a seat in the aluminum / foam / canvas chair desk-crossed from his Engineering faculty advisor. Cheap color prints of silly gag comics. A boxy computer which clatters audibly in obsolescence.

Stacks of paper, stacks. Aluminum with veneered plywood, desk and bookshelves all. Two figures gesture to an ursine blob, clawing up some kind of scaffolding. The poster caption reads, "Well it is a load bear-ing wall."

"Yes. Fine Arts."

"Hope you don't mind, but I can't help wonder if this won't be a waste of your potential." Bruce fidgets a moment but sure is sure. Professor Kim swipes a hand through what's left of his hair and continues.

"We all like you here, your teachers gush about you."

"Thanks." Bruce declines to elaborate. He rolls his palms together, an absent molasses friction. His hands are rougher now, tested by grit and heat. Hairy on the knuckles, thicker at the joints. Kim exhausts a moment in case of explanation or reconsideration.

"Okay then." Kim thumbs through the transfer documents. "Let's figure out how many credits we can salvage for your major."

And that was it.

----------------------------------------

The universe is a complicated place. Hard to handle, mean to fathom. Ancient man tried their best to suss it, but largely imagined animal heads on people, or people who turn into animals, or screw it: here's an old guy with a lightning bolt hanging in his coat rack. They were admittedly, clutching at straws.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Finally, during a period of relative peace and enlightenment, some sensible naked apes started asking the cosmos better questions. Questions like,

What's the substance we're made from?

Are the motion of bodies on Earth and Heaven governed by laws discernible?

Oh shit, does math work?

And these questions would guide them, in time, to scientific advancement and prosperity, to pasteurization and semiconducting silicon. But at some point in between clueless and ChromiumIV tetraoxide-2, came the four elements. Air, Earth, Fire, Water. The substance of stuff distilled into four indivisible essences.

It was simple, it made sense. But before long, it dissatisfied. Not because the system enfigures to a deficient chemistry, humans are eager to overlook these things, but because the soul had no place to roost in the diagram. The immortal spirit which raises humankind above the lesser beasts of the natural wild must certainly have a place in the atomic composition of the universe. It must.

The wisest Alchemists of the age set out to distill this stuff of eternal life, but the task soon spiraled further and further from reach. The essential earths decomposed into gas. Metals refused to reduce out its essential fire. Airs burned with air became water.

The question of the Soul was delayed in favor of something more practical. Flooded with gases both ig and noble, metalloids and valences and protonic numerals, the chemist began to ask instead,

“Wait, what the fuck is Osmium?”

----------------------------------------

"What does it mean?" Laurel asks. She paces tentatively around the canvas as if there might be a second side to it. A good half dozen bangles careen about her left arm, with a light clink whenever the two metal pieces find their way around plastic and cord to each other.

"It's the natural log e," Bruce replies, a soft matter-of-fact. Painting had never been Bruce's favorite subject but the program is rigid; the fundamentals necessary before the department would let upperclassmen retreat into specialty.

Laurel is much more paint than Bruce. Her frizzy hair bundles up into a precarious bun, her loose hanging sweater is bound up with cream colored ribbons at the sleeves to keep them away from her brush – thick warm yarn with generous roping meshing, dandelion yellow - a spackle of irreparable periwinkle dabs from an early experiment with encaustics that had gotten out of hand.

"And what makes a loggie natural or not?" She seems amused by the idea, throwing back an impish glance. Bruce has always been an unconventional member of the class. Holding onto stodgy practical attitudes, he still huffs with politely restrained offense when his peers veer into metaphysics.

Bruce purses into the start of a frown, an effort to brew up patience. "It's a ratio that's important in nature. It's also the solution to a math problem."

"Bruce, did you paint a quiz? Algebra was traumatic for me too, but I don't paint midterm questions."

Unperturbed, he continues. "It's interesting that the two meet. There's no good reason that this number, this mathematical thing, it matches with the way things grow, and sometimes the way things fail." Bruce traces out the shapes on his canvas. A series of offset, overlapping squares of increasing size. They are negatively defined, ghostly in character. Pale blues, sharp warm notes. Edges from the palette knife taper off from precision to rough disorder.

"Grow, okay. Like a plant? Fail though?"

"Or a Nautilus shell. That’s... not Log e, it’s more the log of the golden ratio, but you know… ah, yea," Bruce snatches up a diet pop vacationing on his wall shelf. He makes sure it's still closed before offering it to Laurel, who refuses politely. "Fail, well. When a material, when stuff, is under stress, like being squished or stretched – we can check something called a strain curve," he pauses. Searches Laurel suspiciously with a pinched expression.

"What," she laughs, padding back a half step under scrutiny.

"Some people get bored talking about material strain," Bruce issues gently.

With a clap, and a gleeful half-turn, Laurel pleads to her charges. "Guilty! You got me. I like it though. I think if you give the whole background, Professor Ross will eat it up." She shrugs. "But I don't know if it stands on its own merit. Not enough color in here to really show that you've got the technique down, and that's points off."

"But if I can explain it to Ross -"

"I'm sure she'll dig it. She loves this cross-discipline stuff. If you spoke up more in class, she'd like you a lot better."

Bruce makes a deliberate nod.

"But you could also just throw some more stuff on the canvas."

"And ruin it, I feel."

"Yea, for sure. But it'd be safer for your grade."

Bruce makes a resigned nod. He twists his pop just enough for a slow, diminished hiss; looks over his canvas with intention to compromise.

Laurel mirrors his posture for a moment, to the short end of propriety and patience. She pulls her phone out of her jean pocket and waggles it at him.

"Bruce, do you want to come to a party on Friday?"

He pulls back out of the clouds with a dopey "Hm? What?"

Which turns out to mean yes.