For the past few months I’ve been thinking an enormity about truth and beauty and knowledge. What constitutes them? How can they be so perfect through each other, so interchangeable and consuming and subtle? A lot of things in my life have been coming together lately. Not coming together in a resolution (which is what I would prefer), but just coming together in general. Magnolia is one of my favorite movies. If you talk to me, I will make you watch it. Ask Jamie. But in the very beginning of that movie, the argument is set up - what defines chance? Is it fate that we all seem to be indelibly connected through series of odd events which we call our lives? How many times do we overlook the bizarre subtleties of everyday, excusing them off as “chance” or “coincidence?” Are they? What if they’re not? What if we are like the characters in books, what if we define the term “deus ex machina” - the intervention of supernatural forces to alter a given situation. What if we ARE the literature being influenced by that ethereal, sublime, power which sways the directions of our lives like an overlooked fairyism.

Right now I am thinking, I am yelling thoughts, and I am yelling this: THANK YOU GOD FOR LIFE! IT IS SO PERPLEXING AND BEAUTIFUL AND HOW CAN WE EVER KNOW A THIRD OF WHAT WE SHOULD, OF WHAT WE WANT? KNOWLEDGE IS ADDICTING AND I AM LUSTING AFTER LIFE TO THE EXTENT OF IMMORALITY BUT IT IS SUCH A HOLY FEELING AND WHAT ARE WE, SMALL CREATURES OF INSIGNIFICANCE, THAT YOU WOULD ENLIGHTEN US THROUGH YOUR CREATION, AND CALL US BY NAME INTO A WORLD WE HAVE YET TO UNDERSTAND? THIS IS WHY WE LIVE! CHAMFORT SAID “HIS PASSIONS MAKE MAN LIVES, HIS WISDOM MERELY MAKES HIM LAST.” THIS IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FACTS AND VALUES, BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL

AND THIS IS LIFE, THIS IS PASSION.

Wow. Amen to that. Amen to you and me and the rain. Hallelujah.

The other night Jamie and I were outside in the parking lot of B and N, which is, according to the elevated place it takes in our lives as a gathering place for cool people, not an unusual event. James put on some music for us to dance to. And then we got started shaking around and I jumped and flittered and ran across the parking lot hopping and swaying. Let it be known that I posses no true ability to dance, only to express. So, I expressed, whether it be by way of spastic movements or head bobbing, and James grooved along and said, “I love you, Jen.”

I just bounced more and closed my eyes to the advent of the darkness. Then it was time for Spin Doctors, oh yea, don’t you laugh at me, because true early nineties rock never goes out of style. It’s like the Picasso of music. Abstract enough to be dismissed; pertinent enough to be applicable, and just beautiful through its eccentrics. It is ETERNAL. So don’t you laugh, just don’t you laugh. We started to dance (“express”) some more, and I leapt across the parking lot while some creeps honked at us (probably wanted to warn me that my dancing could result in a detrimental collision with the concrete). There was no rain in sight, but the sky had been flashing all night.

I went out with Dave and Lara earlier for some good time to just exist. We met at one of my favorite little chinese places, and I attempted to read Dave’s tea leaves via what I’ve learned from Harry Potter. (AHH! I am evidence that HP really does inoculate witchcraft into the minds of children!) After dinner we went to Krispy Kreme to marvel at the monumental shrine erected to American Health. No wonder society is obese. We voted to eat the donuts in the car and Dave started a napkin fight. I lost. This is only because in one of my raging fits of napkin revenge, I fell into the spot between the two front seats where I was helplessly stuck, wedged in between the uncomfortable plastic of a Ford Windstar. Dave grabbed my legs, but I kicked him in the neck (purely, by accident) and escaped into the refuge of the front seat. After a while we decided to kill some time by driving down town.

We were sort of having a sentimental nineties rock night, so in the spirit of the past, I put in Third Eye Blind’s song.. what’s it called... “Wish you could step out from the ledge my friend... la la la.” Yea, that one. And I rolled down the window and felt the air and sang aloud and disobeyed the song by refusing to put my past behind me. The past paves the future. It’s a lovely recycling of emotions. Anyway. There we were, three friends reveling in the defining music of our previous lives and lamenting over the years like a dead family of memories. It was truly beautiful. Driving down by the river the sky started to explode with the music. Lightning stemmed out from the clouds like the luminous stalks of nocturnal plants. Lara dropped me off at B and N, and that is how I came to be with James, “expressing” myself by thudding the concrete and shaking my head in an attempted rhythm.

Me when it comes to rhythm: “Abort, abort!”

Haha. Yes. Perhaps it is sad, but don’t feel bad, for I am trying to overcome it.

Outside with James the sky was still flashing, but now it was almost cracking, venturing out from a central burst like antique furniture delineated with the wisdom of age. We started talking about the inevitable connection everyone shares, and once one has realized a truth, it is inevitable that more truths will follow.

“Philosophers, Artists, Scholars,” said James.

“They are all connected.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Philosophers seek truth, Artists seek beauty . . ”

And at that moment we were the products of Plato’s cave.

Philosophers seek truth. Artists seek beauty. Scholars seek knowledge.

Knowledge is truth is beauty. A triad of synonymity which threads together the answers and the questions into reversible units. Invisible metaphysical attachments linking life together with love and with the desire of both.

We must also consider that Truth is a system. It is always changing, always revolving around a single sun. An influential sun that extends enlightenment by offering the warmth of experience and the rays of value. We derive our facts from the truth of value. The evolution of truth always results in a return to truth. Everything altering in accordance to one absolute. This absolute is not disconnected from the world, but made to be the world. It is not isolated as something singularly holy, but its presence makes the earth holy. We can be imperfect beings fully in touch with perfection. The ideal is not intangible because we were designed for it.

What is absolute is also the basis for all dubiety. Premises laid down grow every year in the spring of our mind, but always compelled by the sun of our system. The philosopher says “seek truth.” The artists says “seek beauty.” The scholar says, “seek knowledge.” God says “seek, Seek and ye shall find.”

To seek ourselves is to seek God. We are molded in the image of him, therefore we all contain the ability to discover truth, knowledge and beauty - because those are our original components. In essence, we are what we desire. Now this is not to glorify man. But to glorify man’s image, which is to glorify the Creator through his creation.

I love this! I love this system, this cycle, this gift! I leaned up against James’ car in the parking lot, and I just thought, truth is beauty is knowledge is life is love.