The Life and Times of the Plume

Something I try to do every morning before I do anything else, before I make breakfast or a cup of tea, before I feed the dogs and all the other mouths and beaks, before I check on the horses, before I collect eggs…is step into the large garden here and see what needs harvesting, what needs water, what needs deadheading, what needs fussing over. It’s a literally beautiful way to begin the day — outside where life is apparent and thrumming and aesthetically pleasing to the eye. There is texture, color, weirdness, abundance. It’s good for my soul.

This morning, as I picked a passel of zinnias and enjoyed their different sizes, colors, and details, I thought about how important it is to foster an appreciation for beauty in ourselves and others, to develop an aesthetic, a taste for the sublime. It’s probably what bothers me most as I look at our education systems in North America — the gaping, yawning abyss that exists where art and music classes used to reside. I worry about focusing on teaching kids reading, writing, and arithmetic, racing China to produce tech-savvy children who can build the computers of the future. What about beauty? What about looking at a painting and crying and not being able to express why but just knowing that an invisible string has been tied tight between the artist’s paintbrush and the beats of your own heart. What about looking out at a pristine landscape and understanding how important it is to keep that beauty as it is? When we know about beauty and value it, when we have a developed aesthetic, we want to conserve beauty, we want to grow beauty, we want to design beautiful buildings that reflect nature, we want to grow beautiful gardens that feed our bodies and nurture our souls. When we have been taught about what is beautiful, we care about beauty. I’m over art that is solely about politics, about making statements about how ugly and unforgiveable humanity is, crucifixes in jars of urine… Trash. Nothingness. I want to see beauty. I want to look at art and transcend. I want to feel hope, amazement, joy, wonder…a sense that I have been dipped in dark chocolate…BITTERSWEETNESS. And most of all, I want to see and believe in all the beauty there is in the world. Mercy. Love. Kindness. That’s the art I hang on my walls. That’s the garden I grow. That’s the life I believe in making and living. Our souls are hungry. Give us beauty. Give us art. Give us a garden of delights.