My friend Ron said it beautifully: "Some things of beauty just have to have that dark side associated with their natural condition. I suppose nature has the yin yan too!" We are nature. And, as beautiful as she is, she can be lethal. (Winter Aconite, below)
The beautiful Angels' Trumpet is poisonous. And exquisite. So is Datura. O'Keefe painted Angel's Trumpet. She saw the beauty; she also saw the beauty of bones and skyscapes. Certain beauties are both breathtakingly exquisite and literally breath-taking.
So here's my observation; it's obvious. Life is precious. Life is tenuous. For each perfect kid we rub dry and lead to the teat, there is the potential balance of loss; the stillborn kid, the badly positioned birth. As I've rubbed the living babies to vibrant health, I've wrapped a few still, never breathing infants in their soft-cloth shrouds. And sent them back to the cycle of nature with a prayer. I'm glad this doesn't happen often, but it does happen.
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It's the potential for death that makes this life so bittersweet. A human baby is borne to an online friend; my neighbor's elderly mother is dying. I carried a still-wet goat-kid's body away yesterday, then returned to guide his newborn brother's mouth to their mother's udder. Sometimes it's too painful to bear; and sometimes it's bliss. I only know that we're all a part of it, and that life in its infinite wisdom, has a way of going on. Welcome, Vernal Equinox, with your symbolic dichotomy. Welcome, Spring.
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