Rose of Truth

Beauty is the scent of roses, the thorns of roses, the death of roses, the second flush of rosebuds.

Rose of fate, in your thorn you sought to wound us.

Nothing changes if nothing changes. Better will never be better until we look beyond the colour of the skin, and into the eyes, the minds, and the hearts of fellow human beings. Everyone has something to share, something to teach. If we look deeply – deeply enough to see – both what we have to learn and what we have to teach will become apparent.

Looking at art, too, seeing it, taking the time to ponder its essence, its fullness, to linger with it, to engage with it; stopping to smell its roses, noticing and remembering the colour of its eyes as it a conversation between you were in progress; clearing your head of yesterday and tomorrow so that you can experience today… It is essential to our well-being. It makes us vulnerable. It makes us invincible. It makes us whole.

All of humanity, all of us, we share the blood of the others, blood that is ours, but that we have never known.

Rose of blood, with your blossom you aroused reflection.

It is not proof, proof of anything, that artists offer. Proof is highly overrated. Artists place your fingers upon the pulse of their lives, not to prove they are living, but simply that you might feel, feel, from your fingertips to your heart, from your heart to your head, what they feel.

Instead of complaining that the rosebush is full of thorns, be happy that the thorn bush has roses. And why, anyway, would you want a rose without its thorn? If the honeybee did not die with her sting, would that every taste of honey come with a sting. Living is like licking honey off a thorn.

Art is personal, autobiographical. The depth of one’s experience cannot exceed the height of one’s experience, and vice versa. The depth of one’s pain cannot exceed the height of one’s joy. A life lived vicariously cannot produce art. A life without passion, devotion, adoration, sacrifice, commitment, obsession, pain, and joy cannot create art.

Rose of the wind, you knew, and we the beneficiaries.

Roses are buds, and beautiful, one petal leaning toward adventure. Roses are full, all petals forward, beauty and power indistinguishable. Roses are blown, startled with life.  Their budding is a purpose; their fullness, more purpose; their blowing, a renewal.

May your reach ever exceed your grasp. Crave the rose only if you would revel in its fragrance before giving it your blood. Rue not that the rosebush abounds in thorns, rather rejoice that the thorn bush has roses. As a rose yourself, in unwanted abusive hands, you will better appreciate the significance of thorns.

Roses are blown, startled with life, death young in their faces. Shall they die? Then comes the halt, and recumbence, and failing. No one says, though, ‘A rose is dead.’ But men die: it is said, it is seen. For man is a long, late adventure; his budding is a purpose, his fullness more purpose, his blowing a renewal, his death a cramped spilling of rash measures and miles.

Rose of truth, stronger than any hand.

To the roses no tears: which flee before the race is called. And to man no mercy but his will: that he has had his will, and is done. The mercy of truth—it is to be truth. She has bestowed power and will take back power. There will be dead men, and there will be truth. And with truth there will be truth: voices like truth’s voice, power surrendered, home-keeping, memories of lives that read death-strange in language new-familiar.

No miracle of mist born, no mist that into sheerness turns, astounding self. Same, same was she as she is and is to be: last safety against nothingness where trials of number, power, are stopped from fall impetuous to downward triumph, abyss of lone eternities. There, her surveillance, and herself the common treasure—that which is, and cannot fail to be, ultimate something, living thread by which the cloth of being, though an ancient rag, moulders not utterly. And thus she at the last is, and thus first was she, who in those ageing futures was as present doom prorogued in hearsay.