The Hopeless Beauty of Bounded Recursion
written by: Eli Garcia
How funny we are, we medium-sized mammals who share the attributes we’ve designated to ourselves as defining us.
A distant relation of the cotton plant, we worry our little worries, jobs and survival, birthday parties. A nervous little dog, teeth stuck in a dream we can’t shake loose.
How important they are, these weighty trifles. On the decayed fringe of an explosion that never noticed, we consider these quite ordinary.
We resolve from nothing, eagerly peering out from our link in this organism that stretches back to mud, that we call mother or father, son or daughter, death, or dinner, or a dozen roses. Then we fade back into its roots, nourish those who jostle after us, until they too become static.
And we find space, every point, every perspective, always there, all the time, even unobserved.
We find time, always before, always after, past gently drawing future over the slippery fulcrum of now.
We find size, larger or smaller, never small, never large, limitless scale in infinite resolution.
We find beauty in chaos, rarely perceived but there all the same. Impossible to regard from every aspect, at every time, or any time.
But we try, one body flourishing from the next, filled as soon as created, to flourish in turn with egg or bud, clone, or babe. Teeming, witness without limit, still we do not experience all.
But we try, each gorging on our tiny portion of the whole. And oh, how we cherish ours, and those who follow cherish theirs. The shadows we cast throwing in turn their own dim shadows and textures.
Until, at last, the tendrils wither, shut fast on those who crowd forth.
Then none will follow.
But the rains will follow, at many times, in many places.
Unconcerned for lack of watchers.
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