Touchstone

Not the best photo in the world, but after I took it I realized it corresponded to a verse I return to again and again:

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

            - from The Circus Animals' Desertion, William Butler Yeats

The enterprise of art-making is heroic and clownish together, in the sense that final transformation eludes us, and what we end with are more or less interesting failures, or approaches to what remains out of reach. There are other verses which describe the same process which I will be posting on Saturdays for awhile as I find the images that go with them. 

What are your touchstones?

Edit: This is not a sculpture - it's just stuff piled on a roof in the miniature village which is the Antiques Centre.