In the afternoon light my living room becomes an arabesque of flickering shadows and light. The gray leaves on the floor dance in synchronized step to the green leaves beyond. Greens and grays entwine like lovers who cannot bear to be parted. The collaboration of Light and Air directs the choreography. Gray sings dark harmony to bright songs sung by Green.
Or so it seems to me.
Maybe it seems that way to me because of the pleasant hallucinogenic effect of the smoke swirling suggestively through my head. I wonder, Is it me waxing poetic, or is it the smoke?
Should I care which? Does it matter how beauty gets noticed? I've seen what I hadn't noticed before. Revelation is welcome whether from within or without. Have I gained enough in musing over shadows and solids to count it as revelation?
Sure, why not? Revelatory understanding often comes from no more than looking carefully at what you didn't look at carefully before. Small revelations sometimes reveal large revelations. Even if they don't, small revelations are enlightening on their own. Seeing is always better than not seeing.
Everything is linked.
Shadow can't exist without Solid. The dance of both can't exist without Light. The dance of the leaves can't exist without the caprice of billowing Air.
Linkage expands understanding, by coincidence.
Plato uses coincidence in his metaphor of a viewer trapped in a cave. The viewer assumes the shadows inside the cave match, coincidentally, the reality outside the cave. Plato's dim view of how reliably reality is understood matches my own.
As a result I wonder about everything. Does, this, correspond to that, or is the coincidence meaningless?
I enjoy the wondering. I wonder how much dazzlement there is in my musing.
Enough of that.
Just now, I enjoy the dance of shadow and form: Gray leaf and Green leaf; concordantly entangled. How could I have missed this beautiful relationship. I'd seen the dance before but hadn't really paid attention to it.
Is it the hallucinogenic smoke, or is it me? Am I imagining, or am I just noticing what was always there but hadn't considered. How is that hallucination?
Idleness had as much to do with my musing as the smoke. It's hard to get a clear view of anything when you're whizzing past it.
I watch the dance for hours; eventually my musing changes.
Thoughts of sandwich and beer invade my reflections.
The light of late afternoon passes through my glass
of Heineken bestowing grace upon my simple meal of pepperoni, green onion, and bread. Smoke, beauty, wonder, and appetite, have conspired to make me grateful for a perfectly ordinary day that might otherwise have slipped away without my proper appreciation.
Was it the smoke or was it me? Does it matter?
What would Plato think?