Words are only words.
Ephemeral is a lovely word.
Ephemeral.
Ephemeral.
Transient. and Beautiful.
The Ephemeral Life of a dancing butterfly
~
"I dreamed I was a butterfly, I didn't know it was me in the dream.
Then I woke up and I was me again.
Now I don't know whether it was me dreaming I was a butterfly or whether I am a butterfly dreaming that I am me."
- Chuang Tzu
~
The other day I was sitting outside and it was raining. And beautiful diamond raindrops adorned the leaves and it made me think about gumboots and ducks and Keats' 'Ode to a Grecian Urn'.
There is a quote from it which has been jangling around my head for months now ever since an Oxford professor recited it in a video where Russell Brand went to the university. He said ‘Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.’
Now, when I heard that. I thought it was a good quote. It was good and meaningful but I don’t think I really got it. To use the words of Oprah, I didn’t have an ‘aha!’ moment with that particular piece of poetic scripture.
But when I was sitting out there in the rain watching life going by, I had my ‘aha!’ moment.
Recently life has thrown a lot of... curve balls you could say. Not only to me personally but to the entire planet I think. There’s a financial crisis going on apparently and there’s that global warming thing everyone seems very worked up over (that sentence came with added sarcasm for your reading pleasure).
When you turn on the TV you flip between murder show, to crime show, to a show about adultery, to a show about death, onto another murder show and then onto the news, the most horrorshow of them all.
People seem to be obsessed with throwing terrible images in other people’s faces. Now don’t get me wrong, I think it would be appalling to ignore the starving children, to ignore the ice caps melting, to ignore the bad things that are in the world but it gets a bit overwhelming when the only thing you have to look forward to when you switch on the TV is death, sex and tragedy.
It is through all of this that I got what Keats was on about.
When I first heard the quote, I searched for the meaning through the literal meaning of ‘truth’. I thought, “It is beautiful to see the truth? What if the truth is awful? Telling the truth sometimes causes more pain than keeping a secret.”
I was confused.
It wasn’t until I realised that pain and suffering are not truth.
Of course, they are true in a factual sense, no one can deny that bad things happen BUT they don’t stem from that truth of being a human. That sense of a need to love and to be loved. The spiritual intelligence we all have beneath our cell phones and eyeliner. The mystical fibres that connect us all!! (heehee)
When Keats said (or wrote) ‘Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty’ he really got it.
Little did he know that in the distant future someone would be sitting at home writing out a little analysis of his writing on a computer whilst referencing a talk show host and a comedian. Life is funny sometimes :)
Ephemeral.
Ephemeral.
Transient. and Beautiful.
The Ephemeral Life of a dancing butterfly
~
"I dreamed I was a butterfly, I didn't know it was me in the dream.
Then I woke up and I was me again.
Now I don't know whether it was me dreaming I was a butterfly or whether I am a butterfly dreaming that I am me."
- Chuang Tzu
~
The other day I was sitting outside and it was raining. And beautiful diamond raindrops adorned the leaves and it made me think about gumboots and ducks and Keats' 'Ode to a Grecian Urn'.
There is a quote from it which has been jangling around my head for months now ever since an Oxford professor recited it in a video where Russell Brand went to the university. He said ‘Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.’
Now, when I heard that. I thought it was a good quote. It was good and meaningful but I don’t think I really got it. To use the words of Oprah, I didn’t have an ‘aha!’ moment with that particular piece of poetic scripture.
But when I was sitting out there in the rain watching life going by, I had my ‘aha!’ moment.
Recently life has thrown a lot of... curve balls you could say. Not only to me personally but to the entire planet I think. There’s a financial crisis going on apparently and there’s that global warming thing everyone seems very worked up over (that sentence came with added sarcasm for your reading pleasure).
When you turn on the TV you flip between murder show, to crime show, to a show about adultery, to a show about death, onto another murder show and then onto the news, the most horrorshow of them all.
People seem to be obsessed with throwing terrible images in other people’s faces. Now don’t get me wrong, I think it would be appalling to ignore the starving children, to ignore the ice caps melting, to ignore the bad things that are in the world but it gets a bit overwhelming when the only thing you have to look forward to when you switch on the TV is death, sex and tragedy.
It is through all of this that I got what Keats was on about.
When I first heard the quote, I searched for the meaning through the literal meaning of ‘truth’. I thought, “It is beautiful to see the truth? What if the truth is awful? Telling the truth sometimes causes more pain than keeping a secret.”
I was confused.
It wasn’t until I realised that pain and suffering are not truth.
Of course, they are true in a factual sense, no one can deny that bad things happen BUT they don’t stem from that truth of being a human. That sense of a need to love and to be loved. The spiritual intelligence we all have beneath our cell phones and eyeliner. The mystical fibres that connect us all!! (heehee)
When Keats said (or wrote) ‘Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty’ he really got it.
Little did he know that in the distant future someone would be sitting at home writing out a little analysis of his writing on a computer whilst referencing a talk show host and a comedian. Life is funny sometimes :)