IN THE BEGINNING

"IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD"

Early One morning before dawn, towards the end of a 28-year drunk, I found myself on a grassy knoll overlooking the University of Cincinnati, sitting on the wet grass staring blankly at the big red four-story Baskin & Robbins Building across the street.

I had arrived at this spot by rote early one morning before dawn. The saloons had all closed down for the night, and although I was no longer allowed in any of them, I could still have a good time just hanging around the perimeters, panhandling and fighting off the arrogant college kids who accosted me on a regular basis. I guess it was their sport and amusement, being educated as they were into a system of class-consciousness. It was also too late to get a drink anywhere, even at the 7-11. There was really no place to go but home, and since I didn't have a home at this point I was in the habit of just waiting it out anywhere along the route. Usually in a secluded park or under a stairwell for an hour or two of guarded sleep. Occasionally in a warm basement in the winter where I could snooze until sunrise, awkwardly greeting the appearance of the day's first tenant with a handful of laundry to do as I made my blurry eyed way out into the sunlight of another day. Really anywhere between addresses would do.

This particular night I was laying there in the wet grass nursing what remained of a half fifth of warm wine and watching the guy on the second floor above the ice cream parlor. He was very intent at something, but what it was I couldn't make out beyond the uncurtained windows. Back and forth he paced, traveling with angst the length of the building, appearing briefly in the open windows as he passed them in his mania. Soon I began to imagine that I saw him not only on the 2nd floor, but the 3rd as well, and amazingly enough, on both floors simultaneously. Boy oh boy, what a little moonshine can do!

I watched and wondered for a while, amused, but finally moved on. Where to I headed is not important to this story. But this memory is. For all practical purposes, no memory should exist, because the original episode took place in an alcoholic blackout, a recess from which rarely anything is recovered. Technically there is no memory at all to draw on, except for the sub-conscious imprint stored beneath the surface. So I doubt this `memory' would've ever seen the light of day except for an uncanny experienced that followed a few years later.

Late one night, as I worked furiously in my studio overlooking the University of Cincinnati campus, I had a sensation. I was manic, moving swiftly from room to room, preparing artworks for an approaching exhibit, when suddenly I was overcome by the feeling that someone was watching me. It was late, with dawn approaching, a time observed throughout history as the cautious part of day. I wasn't afraid though, merely irritated. Who the fuck was out there sitting on the grass at this time of the morning anyway? I looked. O, there was someone out there all right, and he was propped up against a tree and following my every move through dazed eyes. And as my eyes began to focus on the darkness outside I received the shock of my life: the person who was staring so intently back at me was myself. Fred Burkhart, in the flesh, over there on the grassy knoll, thinking his/my drunken thoughts out loud! “In the Beginning was the Word…”

Of course it was me over there, in 1976, dreaming my dreams of drunken stupor, my homeless yearnings for empowerment, the desires of my heart beginning to stir within my breastbone. As I sat there, oblivious to myself, the Word worked within me, creating out of nothing the future I would someday inhabit. My life's work, only then becoming conscious, grown from a vision delivered that night on the wet grass. Thus did I dream my future studio into reality. “And the Word became Flesh and Dwelt amongst us…”

And for certain it was me a half dozen years later in 1982, overlooking my devastated past by injecting it with a renewed faith. Not the erroneous 100-proof mockery of spirit that I knew then, but a reconnecting with the true spirit, which is nothing less than the ancient essence which animates all of us. It's the old Buddhist trick of the perceiver becoming that which is perceived, mapped out long ago by a wise and benevolent Creator. “And at the same time that Word was with God and was God…”

No, it can't be explained all that easily, can it? Somehow the fool I was in 1976 had contacted the fool I was to become in 1982, a bizarre encounter and subsequent confrontation from beyond the fabric of time-space. Somehow we were both there together in the same moment, sharing the uniqueness and making the past, present and future indistinguishable from one another. Everything - all time and apace - acting simultaneously as this moment. Isn't that what Eternity is supposed to be like anyway? When I had this experience I was most certainly getting at the truth that Christ exemplified: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the Ending at one and the same time.” Unfortunately, I had been too drunk in 1976 to catch on. O what an amazing revelation it could've been!

But of course this mysterious juxtaposition is only the tip of the iceberg. If the 1976 Burkhart was indeed viewing the 1982 Burkhart - and also the other way round - who then was it doing the viewing? Who was God talking to when it was written, Let us make man in our own image, male and female alike?” Talking to another aspect of Him, Her or Itself? Was He talking to me? Again! And whom was I appealing to in the mid-seventies when I received the projection under the tree, sitting quietly and gazing unknowingly into the future? Myself? God? Or is it just one of an infinite variety of Fathers and Sons - Mothers and Daughters - which continuously manifests itself on behalf of our ignorance? If I have learned anything in the subsequent years, I am convinced that the hazy Word encountered in 1976 did indeed “become flesh and dwelt amongst us.” And it still dwells.

Any questions before I depart?

BURKHART STUDIOS

2845 N. HALSTED STREET CHICAGO ILLINOIS 60657 773 348-8536