"The Elegance of Word"

Thank God that the creator's essence exists in all of us.  While the better of our spirits should focus outwards toward others it is good to know that we are all, in one way or another, unique.  Unique in our DNA and unique in our talents.  When one can muster an all encompassing will to master and exploit these talents you have magic!   Alas, most us are destined to devote our energies toward getting through life's struggles, our souls abraded by the harsh winds of reality. 

So we must pursue beauty produced by those whose talents were so magnificent and their will so prevailing that, to "not"  pursue their extreme talents would have been absurd.  We of the "working" crowd are grateful.
We find beauty and grace and intellectual stimulation in the works of Dali and Van Gogh and Matisse and Picasso.  We find our souls transpired by the beauty of music.  I love both art and music but the power of the written word is equally compelling.  The best writers say what we would like to say but can't...and they do it as concisely and as powerfully as we could possibly imagine.  Their words echo in our minds long after the reading. 

Just recently I came across Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?"   Has there ever been a better description and expression of love than Browning evokes in 14 brief lines?  I share with you now:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Pure Elegance!

And who among us has never struggled with career choice, or life choice, and contemplated that choice for decades later.  Could we "simple joes" have said it any better than Robert Frost in "The Road Not Taken?"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 

Elegance...and elegance may also come in small packages as well....note the four lines of elegance by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light!
Elegance...who would not enjoy that brief eulogy?


And so, my friends, plug in the coffee pot, boiled that egg, slip on the attire specific to your day, don't forget the grocery list and the kid's soccer schedule....and delight in knowing, that, as you desire, you may fling off the chains of "normalcy" and dwell in the elegance of incandescent spirits.