Parallel.

[icebluenothing]

Last night I was driving downtown, near the Paramount, and I looked out my window and I saw a line of yellow caution tape, strung along construction barrels, gently blowing in the breeze, and just beyond that, running parallel, a steel guardrail, a handrail along the edge of the walkway overlooking the freeway below.

The juxtaposition of these two objects -- one transient, fragile, purely symbolic, the other as close to permanent as we can make, and both objects having the same purpose, to protect people -- suddenly struck me as somehow completely transcendentally beautiful. Unintentionally arranged, but as aesthetically placed as lines in a poem.

I suspect sometimes that if we didn't wander around blind to it all -- if our senses weren't dulled from overexposure -- we'd realize that the whole world, all of it, was so incredibly beautiful, we'd be perpetually, helplessly dumbstruck.

Comments

[capnexposition.livejournal.com]

Forgive my saying so, but you sound as if you were very, very high.

[icebluenothing.livejournal.com]

But see, you're just demonstrating my point -- that to most of us, at most times, having that kind of unmediated experience -- awareness of beauty without the preconception of the world as merely mundane and uninteresting -- is something that we would consider laughable, or childish, or possible only through chemically altered states. This interests me, and occasionally frustrates me.

[capnexposition.livejournal.com]

Well, see, I know what you're talking about...and I need to draw attention to the last line of your post: "we'd be perpetually, helplessly dumbstruck". This is absolutelty true. Our minds insulate us from experiencing everything so utterly because the alternative is being, as you said, perpetually stunned and helpless. Which is not a survival trait at all. So our brains shield us from experiencing everything all the time. The alternative is, in fact, a mental illness, a genetic blip on the radar.
I know someone whose adoptive younger sister has the actual disorder that replicates this; she is unable to filter or tone down the flow of information into her brain, and as such is a total mess, unable to control her emotions or behavior.
I know this isn't -exactly- what you meant, but consider the implications. When you take off the filters on your mind and really experience everything around you, it leaves you unable to interact with anything effectively. Or does it? One wonders.

[pulpguy.livejournal.com]

For a moment I thought this was going to end with "...so I hit them with my car..."

[lawst.livejournal.com]

I have that sort of experience at *least* once a week. I think artistic personalities (of all sorts) tend to. This is why I usually prefer to let Jason or someone else drive unless I absolutely have to do it myself, because I'm easily dumbstruck in just such a way.

v

[(Anonymous)]

. Much respect!