THE COUNTING FALL

. . . How easily and unconsciously creative expression becomes enmeshed in conventional practice and current trends put up walls. But all around us are living pictures of ourselves which can give us insight into that crippling universal reality. As it is in the world of Nature, so is it in all things. The living ‘flowers,’ of a single ‘plant,’ come to ‘bloom’ for awhile then die for new ones to flourish; in their continually necessary temporal cycle of life and death continuous renewal and the way of LIFE for all things. But we are not so wise as the flowers. We hang on to ‘the stem,’ refuse to fall, and miss out on what’s next. But not so the flowers; they know this is the way of things, and fall happily and so continue flowering; and Solomon, in all his glory, was not so wonderfully or wisely arrayed as one of these. 

   In no way aspiring to be instrumental, perhaps it might be true, that without pushing the limits, without crazy-seeming innovation and experiment, people and literature, and all forms of art would stagnate—and without knowing it; because you can’t know something without something to know it by. If you can’t recognize it, how can you tell if you are doing it, or not?  So maybe we ought not to resent or resist those things which we cannot yet understand—even though fearing the Unknown is a natural human instinct—but rather brave that intangible place, plunge into its dark and delight in it: and increase within us the wherewithal to know it by. Else, what will we gain from sticking to our pride’s right to comprehend everything before we approve of it? We will gain only dimming pools of reluctant water and perpetually paralyze our powers of perception. But anyone who has once learned to surrender their impressions finds a new world forming there, where they let go; and an eager surge of lively water rising in a new awakening.