Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Indulgent Obtuse Abstraction

Sitting on a creek bank, I feel my thoughts drifting mercifully into the abstract.
Getting at the hostility I harbor for things synthetic, or, similarly, the affection in which I hold all things organic must involve looking at the motive behind the creation of both.
I can and do, at times, admire human craftsmanship, but there is a begrudging element that holds the admiration in check.
Why so exquisite, o Man?
Positively, there is some self-seeking motive, some selfishly practical purpose behind a well-crafted house or even a beautiful painting or even the words I now write.
But what prompts the attention to detail given the dead leaf I twirl in my hand?
Why the grace in its lingering descent?
More the blood veins running throughout its curled deformity than brush strokes in Monet's Waterloo Bridge. More pleasing the color, too.
Pure the beauty, purer still the motive back of it.
Man's gift for creation is purely given, to be sure, but corrupted in the accepting.
We want something corporeal from everything we are given.
Whether it be a talent or a sunset.
Acclimation for the talent or some sort of epiphanic triumph from the sunset.
We're given so much, and we grasp it so tightly, and the intrinsic value bleeds through our clutching fingers and drips into the dirt, corrupted eternally.
We're given more, and still swifter we lunge, taking hold, and still faster the essence dissipates.
Why the crescendoing harmony of the breeze slipping over creek bank, the wind's bow slipping delicately across the strings of a million leaves, the sighing decrescendo of its ruffling escape across the water?
Why the fragmented replication of so much gorgeous arboreal chaos in the green translucence below me?
I've so little time for this, God, let me hold it lightly, that may gladden my heart and enrich my soul as You intended.

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