(no subject)
Today I was walking outside. As I approached an oak I saw falling a batch of leaves all hanging on the same little stick, very light and thin, just barely enough to hold the bunch together. As the leaves fell, they swirled around in the air, like the blades of a helicopter, trying vainly to return to their former glorious heights. As they continued their decent toward the ground, I could see the swirling color, the vibrancy of their movement, a dance in the final minutes of living, celebrating life with a joyous expression of rapture, performing the intricate steps of its practiced movements upon the toes of an unamused Death. Downward they spiraled, repelling the darkness that was sure to engulf them in a final act of divine resistance, a beauteous danse macabre, a tribute to the wonders of life. And so, as all beautiful things do, the leaves hit the ground without a net, with the grave knowledge that there will never be (for them at least) another day of sunlight, or another light spring rain to bask in, never a breeze to pass through their translucent veins. And yet, when I came upon the batch of fallen ballerinas, I found that the group as a whole was diseased and crumbled, tossed off by the capricious tree. And as I looked at those leaves of black bubbles and holes, brown, ripped edges and torn arteries, I realized that they were more beautiful than an ocean sunset or a picturesque waterfall rushing down a great cliff, or any other cliche thing of renowned beauty, for they, in all their turmoil and pain, suffering and torment, had lived. Here lay the remnants of the ugly, the distorted, yet only moments before they bedazzled my eyes with their cynical act of revolt against the unbreakable grip of their new master. And as they lay in their undug, makeshift grave,I realized I had seen the fall of a forsaken hero, the abandonment of life.