Parallel.

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.