Of Clouds and Brick

Contemplating quilted patches of clouds calmly drifting by over the Grand Avenue downtown storefront facades, gray undersides with dull silver to white-shimmering fringes above the red to brown bricks and carved stone or wood crowns and ornamented windows sills and door frames and plaques denoting antique dates of construction, contrasting orders emerge: ice crystals forming fractals forming amorphous massings of percipitatious possibilities casually hanging out in limbo between unseen layers of atmosphere and between floating and falling, indeed responsive and harmonious to the most intricate patterns of molecular bonding and movements of air and vapor and heat and cold flowing 'round the globe, quite complex sequences intrinsic to the very nature of matter; to stacks of fabricated rectangular blocks staggered evenly along established lines, embellished with carved crowns of stone and wood to break the monotony of bricks and mortar.

Though indeed natural patterns yet prevail in the face of synthetic intentions and the most seemingly unnatural of human contrivances, amidst angular and measured constructions and divisions and delineations of downtown buildings and human experiences, these provide at least a clear aesthetic contrast (if they don't actually conflict) to the seeming random yet indeed intricately and ornately ordered and eternal patterns of elements interacting, whether four or five or a hundred and eighteen.

Human order, to a degree and insofar as not instinctual or intuitive or truly spiritual, is subject to fashion as much as to physics, and is much more concerned with maintaining control and appearances than are the clouds and sky, earth and water, fires above and below, wild animals and plants and other things that live and grow.

Indeed, despite human presumptions of power over nature and pretense of being somehow separate from the natural world's sometimes chaotic symmetries, when all appearance of stacked brick and grid patterned neighborhood streets of asphalt and concrete have been erased by actions of wind and water, earth and fire, we shall realize patterns of Nature are those which abide, like those that form crystals in the sky or underground, which order seasons and orbital dances of planets and stars and electrons and make molecules to build cells and bodies and life to live, and which order the consciousness we already know as ourselves, and behind the scenes our Self, most true.

Then we shall surely see the absurdity of so many sacrosanct and subjective hierarchies and constructs, classes and caste as these compared to those eternal patterns and natural frameworks which abide beyond culture or fashion or nigh any and every mere human device or devisement. When this cycle of illusions built upon illusion is o'er and we each and eventually all come to a recollection of that which is lasting, pure, natural and knowing, those arbitrary taxonomies and blueprints and artifices we felt so seminal to our lives and sanity will be but the proverbial 'dust in the wind,' or perhaps remembered as of little more importance than a wisp of cloud temporarily interrupting the pleasant warmth of the sunshine, a likewise pleasant experiencing.