The mood of a moment can best be captured in images: scattered leaves drifting across the road, blown back and forth, the barrenness of the trees revealing the blue sky of winter, patches of snow remaining from the autumn's first snowfall. Nature teases us by making death so beautiful. Not the death of animals, or the corruption of flowers, but just the presentiments of the parks and woods, as that of sunsets, can echo the mourning and comfort which accompany mortality, as if to join the dead and living. Like the waters of baptism, our tears of bereavement wash away the guilt of life, and, vicariously, of death.
What noise disturbs this mood? The shrill caw of the crows interrupts the thrill of their flight, as the duties of life assert themselves against our ecstasies of grief, and the most mundane details of life become more pressing than that horror, the richness of ordinary things robbing death of its significance, as though working to put dinner on the table was akin to the rage of Achilles defying the gods. This richness of being, however, being much too much, we learn to use music and art as storehouses of deep, unsettled emotion, and as the master craftsmen of the earth abscond with our hard won wealth, they leave behind a stillness and a quiet beyond expressing.
The fecundity of these experiences forming intricate and complex connections within us, like the labor of bees ends with honey, words are flowing out like....
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