It's called the contadino's friend. Baling wire. Trellising wire. There are a thousand uses and re-uses for it.As I clear the farm I still have to be careful I don't stoop to reach into brambles or weeds and get an eye poked out. In kinky strands, curlicues, and abstract cattle brand-like shapes it lurks everywhere, holding split trees together, anchoring things to the ground, waiting to spring up like a booby trap and zap. I keep finding it. And saving it. And using it. I have re-trellised the vineyard almost entirely with the old wire I have found, splicing rusty lengths together because it looks better among the gnarly trunks of our 40-year-old vines than shiny new galvanized wire would.
To my eye it looks like the raw material for art. Perhaps this is what Calder saw in it too.
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