Eulogy to Beauty

As was Everett Ruess, I am a "vagabond for beauty."

Life is not a painful experience without one or more of three things, the three thrilling L's of my philosophy: longing, loss, and love.

The world is not a painful place without a passion for these things.

After politics and headlines and cliches and the petty trappings of "practical" lives, there are these three things.

The leaves on the trees. Leaves, green, turned to colors of rust and rot and fire and forest and endings, loss, longing, love.

The smile remembered. The moment, the time, the instance, the instant of that smile, a smile made for you, there before you, given to you.

On these things, leaves and smiles, life rests and falls.

Into autumn, falling into fall.