It is fortunate for us, however, that Nature is so imperfect, as otherwise we should have no art at all — Oscar Wilde
How true, how true — but alas, art is, truly, less perfect than nature. When are we going to learn that we can imagine the ideal, but we can never achieve it? For every step closer we get, perfection moves ten steps further ahead of us; the more we know the more we don’t know.
I remember the teenage me, tripping my brains out on acid, freaking into doom and gloom, my brain twisting like a fat rubber-band — and this was supposed to be enlightening? Fortunately, in those moments, simply hugging a tree was a lot better, smelling its bark, feeling its protection, getting lost in its tiny mosses and fungi, knowing its roots run deep and its leaves held cosmic truths.
Indeed, it was enlightening! Here on Earth we will find our happiness.
Today, when I walk through the woods with qualia floating in my mind, the trees are cheering me on, a stadium of giants chanting “go go go you’re on the right path!”
Why would I want knowledge when I can feel like this, wonder, just like this? Why ponder the perfection of art when I’m experiencing it, a part of it? I am so much older now, when one moment is all blossoming and beautiful, and the next decaying and sublime – maybe I never stopped tripping!
I am still rising toward or falling away from an intangible ideal. I crave an emptiness into which flows the power of ecosystems – that is my faith. Qualia is that power, flowing into me, helping me endure, giving me meaning, providing contentment.
I am neither too interested nor too much participating in the world — “too much” are the traits of the addict, of progress, of success, and “too little” lacks compassion.
Ecosystems are not perfect, but they are, always, almost perfectly balanced. People are less so – as if we only just walked up one side to the center of a seesaw – art represents those moments when we find equilibrium and we can see past ourselves.
Oscar Wilde could mock the romance of civilization because he could see beyond it!