Color and Fire

"But in spite of his immense wisdom and his mysterious breadth, he had a human burden, an earthly condition that kept him involved in the small problems of daily life. He would complain of the ailments of old age, he suffered from the most insignificant economic difficulties, and he had stopped laughing a long time back because scurvy had made his teeth drop out." ― Gabriel García Márquez, "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

"Compared with music all communication by words is shameless; words dilute and brutalise; words depersonalise; words make the uncommon common." ― Friedrich Nietzsche

"When I had looked at the lights of Broadway by night, I made to my American friends an innocent remark that seemed for some reason to amuse them. I had looked, not without joy, at that long kaleidoscope of coloured lights arranged in large letters and sprawling trade-marks, advertising everything, from pork to pianos, through the agency of the two most vivid and most mystical of the gifts of God; colour and fire. I said to them, in my simplicity, ‘What a glorious garden of wonders this would be, to anyone who was lucky enough to be unable to read.’" ― G. K. Chesterton, "What I Saw in America"

"That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day." ― 2 Corinthians 4:16

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Dear Kate,

Why is beauty so susceptible to perversion?

Remember maybe about a year ago I asked you to bring me what you "saw in America," a voice recorder?  Still remember what it was for?  (Not that there's none in Canada, but that's another story, if you can remember that one too.)

I wanted to record the words as they came out of me when walking Sumi every morning.  I swear to the Nobel committee I had in me a new laureate every breaking dawn.  I read myself, surprised.

I have not used the recorder ever since I got it, not even once.  You know me enough to know how ridiculous this is, me wasting money and serious consideration.  I failed often, but not like this.  I misread myself, more surprised.

I am giving you third-grade writing now, the kind that gets captured, looked upon and turned over, wings of a dead hummingbird.  Colors and fire, how do you pin them down?  The round button with a red dot on it, I rattled my pocket to hunt for the bull's eye: Must Kill Bird.  How violent a misunderstanding. 

I have enough of this world making ugly things and things ugly.  We talk and talk and talk, keep choring away, living out of our frustration, can't start to see why either, too busy to, too risky, gotta let the train wreck run its glorious course.  A vision of beauty? we asked.  You see what you get get what you see that's life and life's that.  To baffle our way in and out of our next trouble is the only forward movement worth chronicling around dinner table, comparing games middle-class and tame.  Tomorrow is another bird.

I shall police against brutality from here to eternity.

Yours, Alex