I sit in the quiet of my backyard below and surrounded by a fluttering of fire lights that claim to keep the mosquitoes at bay. It is quiet except for my ipod and the soft hum of my central air unit. Behind me, my wife and children are sleeping, the neighbors to the right and left have no idea I am out here, they are in repose. In the quiet, it is overwhelming; the feeling that life is beautiful. It isn't perfect, but it is beautiful. Every little detail, if given some effort can be recorded and you can bring them back anytime you want to remind yourself that amidst all of the storms and fear and disappointment and loss, there is still so much beauty. It exists even if you haven't felt like smiling in some time. It exists for those who walked away from happiness long ago. It exists for those who have only seen heartache. It exists in the days everything is art.
The smoke billowing from the stacks of a polluted factory town. The streetlights that pass overhead while driving at night. The way you can make yourself laugh by making faces in the mirror or pretending to cry to see what you look like crying. The sound of a passing train miles off. The smell just before it begins to rain. The white of fresh snow before the salt melts it away.
Problem is, most beauty melts away. I don't know if it is because we let it, or if it just goes. You have to look for it most days. Times get fast and we get really busy being busy. We forget that some things we do on the day-to-day are meaningless. Read Ecclesiastes, it makes sense. Life is better lived enjoying the beauty of the things that salt cannot melt away. We get road weary and hardened because we work so hard to forget time. Time was never meant to be wished away or taken for granted. Time is what we have here for a very short period before everlasting beauty. Why spend it in endless, monotonous numbers? We have senses to experience what it really means to be alive.
We have the ability to smell because God wanted you to remember your grandma and her faith when you come across moth balls or old quilts. We have the ability to see, because God wanted us to relish in the beauty that man cannot harm. We can hear because God can reside in the sound of a French horn or a piano. We touch because contact with others shows us we are all the same in some ways and never really alone. We can taste because food is delicious.
Sing.
Migrate.
