BEYOND AND BEYONDER

by MATT HART

from SMARTISH PACE

Beyond and beyonder, appearances and depths.

The vision looking out is the same as looking in and what one sees depends on the eyes: who’s looking? Philosophy, it kills us, but it also lifts us up. Geometiy

at angles, without cutting, through smoke, and physics and wonder do we even exist at all? There are a thousand ways, and more, to sing and to song. Some days the heart alights in a tree, and others the tree is already

on fire. It comes as no surprise, then: what’s beautiful is always both crash site and landing, memorial and monument, lighthouse and warning. The sense of our senses both exuberant and dire. In us

the wildest bewilderment glistens. The wilderness transforms as the architect explodes. Eveiy single one of us a hymn to achievement, so weird with potential, so wired to wolfish-ness, illimitable goodness. In life

as in art, what’s important are the choices, the actions that follow and the forms as they glow. Let us consider the past as we go, and let us consider the future at our fingers. What do we want for the next generation,

and the next generation s next generation? When they listen to our music, when they open our books, remember our wars and treaties and image, will they find there a lightness or an absence where we fluttered? An elegy

in which to drown? An ode to something better? This isn t in darkness, but in love, it’s a promise. The human predicament is nothing short of marvelous. We get to decide how it goes.