Phantasmagoria

I have found the grace of life among the company of dear friends and affectionate family; each, in their own way, providing a plentitude of love and comfort that emanates from their smiling faces and the warmth lent from their hearth and hearts. In other times I walk alone, only in the company of the grace of God—that universal energy that pervades all things, the ebb and flow of life.

In nature we find a venue of boundless interactive animation that invigorates the senses and quickens the soul. Look out into the living painting, our vibrant world that changes with varied degrees of perspective. The vermillion sunset, a stunning panoramic panoply, saturates the stratification from tranquil Arcadia to the firmament above—the quintessence of diametrical harmony. In nature we find the consummate artist, magnificent and proficient in manifold forms: Earth and sky her canvas, the supernatural her muse. Such resource in her abundant collection of dye and paint; a full spectrum of colors peppered in various tints and tinges in undulating display.

In the garden's retreat bloom the assorted species of Petunia, Daffodil, Primrose, and all shades of the Orchis fimbriata—charming and ornate. The nurturing soil gives birth to such botanical splendor, ephemeral and sweet, enticing the senses with perfumes of passion in redolent array; they are the picture of loveliness.

The strength-test of enduring wood and stone, from the deepest crevasse of the abysmal sea to the highest mountain's peak: everything is subject to the touch of the sculptor—water, wind, heat, and cold—the fingers of the hand of time. Elements succumb to elements; compression, erosion, collision—the applied forces converging together, a visible masterpiece by the invisible master.

From the subtlest graces to violent destruction—the tender brushwork of the flowing zephyr lends an otherworldly understanding of detail to the whole. The hammer and chisel of quaking earth—shaping, shifting, molding… But always a new work each day from the previous night made, basking in a golden luster; a gleaming gallery of sunlit wonders displayed anew to inspire awe in all the waking world.

All these marvels seduce man so perfectly, so completely, emancipating our imaginations from the doldrums. So enchanting is this grand schemata of vast scope and vivid design—a finite world of infinite wonder. As the whispering winds are swept in from places distant, like so many processions of angels, it is here we realize that heaven is no place to which we go, but rather the place in which we already live.

—A