Ordinary and Profound

I received the following quote in an email from a friend, Eleanor, who has been away for the summer:

just tonight i emailed the following from Wilde's De Profundis to a friend:

"Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole."
 
I was and am quite touched by this beautifully worded, poignant quote. I decided to read the rest of the essay. It was filled with many interesting thoughts about life, artists, and prison. As he kept referring to prisom and prison, I shuttered at thought of being locked away in a small space in a small room.
 
Then, a flip of perspective flitted into a view. Here I was visiting at a laptop in a small room for hours, sometimes days (inside my apartment). Yet, the whole natural world was only a few feet away, such abundance. Why do I, we sit in little boxes when we could be out tasting, touching, smelling, seeing a multiple of things. Why do we so often choose sameness over variety, newness, freshness. I admit to loving comfort, but do I want it to be to the exclusion of life and real physical world interaction. And even though I am endlessly fascinated by the myriad of ideas, places, and pictures that come across this magical screen, I don't think any of them can take the place of depth of the natural world. A picture of bacon just doesn't taste the same as the real thing.

For a perfect ending a quote sent to me by my friend Jan:
 
"What's left? Everything." - Anonymous

May you taste the goodness of life