the lost man chronicles
purple-pink skies .68

I find much pleasure in the bemusement that false truths provide other folks—those archaic systems and tidy sums of value that attribute grief and joy to destiny or hide our ignorance or side with compromise, if only to provide relief to the mentally fatigued—the religion that provides a convenient, albeit beleaguered, set of morals; the elusive laurels of social contracts and obstinate institutions; the childhood myths we uphold to entertain and protect the innocent (i.e. maintain ignorance); and the mystical beliefs in the unexplained. Mysteriously, all of these inexplicably still reign in a culture enlightened by centuries of science.

Or perhaps it is not so mysterious. Maybe the answers lie in human nature, the inclination not to believe that life is all so simple and limited to atoms and molecules constantly in motion; the need to believe in miracles that make life magical and meaningful; the myriad reasons we sin and lie, if only ultimately to say we are trying not to be all the same; or if only to say that we are more than merely animals that err, can overcome, can feel bliss and victory, jealousy, shame.

And even if one may never concur with the hypothesis of a higher being, she still is humbled by her humanity, and the insanity of contradiction that makes one prone to seeing and feeling and having faith in the divine intervention that stokes the throes of human intimacy.

Moreover, I also believe in the majesty of purple-pink skies at dusk, the way corn clings to the husk just as a man and a woman can cleave as lovers, the rural ecstasy of stars that we uncover when the hovering dim of city lights is removed, the unnoticed multitude of phenomena in our daily lives that would behoove us not to be overlooked, to see the lines where water breaks over mossy rocks in a brook, if only to see alluring form where others merely see the norm, if only to see the awesome fireworks and hear the euphonic symphony of a thunderstorm.

Everything explicable does not have to be packaged in myth to remain befuddling, bewitching, and simply beautiful.






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