the most beautiful experience

Leaving class on Wednesday morning with a fluster of information about the behavior of art and why human tendencies make room for order, symbolism and novelty nearly made my head blow up. I had been stuck on the topic of grouping and ordering things like up and down, more and less, us and them and light and dark, as the conversation soared towards the act of extraordinary. Earlier that day, in my Colonial Latin America class, we were talking about the concept of light and dark in the Aztec civilizations and their perception of divinity. The Spanish colonists believed that evil and Satan was born in the dark. Because the Aztecs embraced light and dark as a circular way of life and incomplete without a new beginning, they were seen as an immoral bunch by the Spaniards. All humans are a complex emotional bunch with their language and other acts of social behavior. Without this bond that outlines a certain culture, there would be no extraordinary out of the ordinary order. Such as the Aztec concept of light and dark; without the darkness there is no new beginning and without evil, good wouldn’t be as “good.”

Extraordinary is many times effortless or perhaps only appears that way. One of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had maybe only considered art once there was a picture taken of it and even then the effect wasn’t nearly as majestic; the kind of majestic that takes your breath away and leaves you with chills. The kind that has no words but an associative feeling such as to those who have shared the act of flipping the last page of a favored novel. As much destruction it caused us those nine days without power, the ice storm was one of the most amazing experiences me and many families had shared during that winter.

We were locked in by a fallen tree in our driveway. My dad’s salt water fish tank all died. The high school was being used as a shelter. The local gas stations were without power for three days immobilizing thousands. Many neighbors were brought together around the initial source that keeps people generated, that being heat and good eats. I remember walking out into our back field in an eerie silence that only snow can absorb underneath a bright blue sky and trudging through 3 feet of snow to my favorite rock underneath a lone tree. The tree was so heavy with ice that it was like a sparkling cave.  I have never felt so alone and so connected at the same time. Connected because we were all experiencing the same creative destruction and yet so alone in silence that my thoughts seemed like the loudest sound around. It reminded me of an old Tibetan mantra “Om Mani padme hum” meaning that silence “also has its sound, its music… although the outer ears cannot hear it, just as the outer eyes cannot see it” (Satrakshita).

Om Mani Padme Hum." Satrakshita - Beyond Personality, Quest for Transcendence. Web. 15 Sept. 2011. <http://www.satrakshita.be/om_mani_padme_hum.htm>.