Beautiful Disaster, Horrible Masterpiece

We’re so uniform. So obsessed with lines, with symmetry, with perfection. I often wonder if the gods meant it to be this way. If when they placed the particles of an atom together they knew it would grow into the square lines of property, mowed in straight, differing greens. “This one’s mine, this one’s yours.” It’s ambiguous, and then it isn’t, and then it is again when I ascend further into the black of the universe. Suddenly the symmetry is gone, blurred into the white and green and blue of that little marble. The rules, the regulations, the science that has always strapped me to the floor of the earth like a seatbelt has dissolved into nothing. Nothing but the arbitrary life of what I thought I was existing for.

I’m leaving. I’m going to ask the gods if they really knew what they were doing when they introduced a proton to a neutron, if they can break down all the parts of a cell, if they can explain to me this disaster, this masterpiece. Even if they did, I doubt I’d understand. Maybe they just threw everything into a giant croc-pot like my mother’s chilli recipe. Always hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

I want to sit at the dinner table and ask if it turned out how they thought it would. If the January wind that blow by frosty windows was part of the plan. If the smell of wet sidewalks, stamped with the paws of stray dogs and wandering children was in the divine. I want to ask if it looks, if it smells, if it tastes the way they thought it would. If it was worth all the trouble. This beautiful disaster, this horrible masterpiece.