My lava lamp is many things. Once you turn on the light, and the lava heats up in the oil-filled lamp, the changes taking place inside are slow and hypnotizing. It is as if you are witnessing evolution, from its beginning of primordial ooze, to its apex of modern creations. What begins in the bottom as a flat, lifeless blob, transforms as the lava moves up the bottle and breaks apart into smaller bubbles. A beautiful universe, complete with stars and huge floating planets begins to take shape. Slowly then, this illusion changes. The perpetual motion of the purple goo helps it then form a city skyline with a large gray slurpee hanging upside down over-head, threatening to descend on the purple skyscrapers below.
Last night, as I sat watching the lava move and change, my mind saw Dino in the violet bubbles. The dinosaur looked as if he were just bounding to meet his beloved owner, Fred Flintstone at the door with a big, wet doggie kiss, as Fred returned home from a hard day's work. I was taken back by that thought to days of my childhood, when we would sit on a hillside of clover and watch the clouds in the warm summer sky. My friends and I would debate over whether we saw giant sea turtles in the puffy whiteness, or if it was a big rocket headed for space, complete with blasts of fire and a plume of dark smoke following close behind. The lava moves much the same way as those childhood clouds. It can change slowly and deliberately, so you can see things transforming, or redirect its energies in the blink of an eye.
No matter whether it moves quickly or slowly, the lava never creates the same beautiful scene twice. At once it is a changing universe, and just as suddenly, a pair of hands reaching out of molten purple earth. My lava lamp does produce light, as most lamps will, but it is much more than a simple source of illumination. It is a prehistoric and post-modern work of art.
