I went and stood in an empty lot; coffee, cigarette, the last rays of warm afternoon sunlight. Weeds growing in a crevice in the concrete wall. Seeing it i thought, this is beautiful. I thought, I am a person who sees that this is beautiful. All of it, I suppose; the quality of the untended living, the quiet distance of the winter sun. The mechanism of my body as it swallows the coffee down, tiny halos and rainbows in my eyelashes, just for me as I stand turned towards the light.
My mission is to preach the gospel of love. My right, my reason; the power that rests in my hands and fingers. The endowment of life has given me this; to bear the vicissitudes, to hold the dream from the center until the last breath leaves my body. I didn't come here on a lark, from a whim, pin the tail on the world map. Discerning my path to the best of my ability, I chose this. The stars are a guide, yes; so is the newspaper, so are the men and women i meet on the street, so is the city as it rises ever higher into the air. Let's have laughter, yes, let's enjoy the full breadth of the wonders, but hey, this is also pretty serious. Sixty-three years ago here a plane flew high overhead and released a dazzling scientific achievement into the living air. This marvel fell down from the sky into the very heart of a city, and in the next moment the city was gone. We the people have developed the capacity to end ourselves. The apocalypse isn't somebody's abstracted vision anymore: it rests in the cool ground underneath midwestern cornfields, waits for the simple flip of a switch.
How you talk about things is important. The vision you inscribe, impart to the collective around you. So I stand in the empty lot in the quiet afternoon winter sun, I see the green untended living having taken root in the crack in the concrete wall; and I try to understand why it is beautiful to me.