Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
—John Keats, letter to George and Thomas Keats on December 21, 1817
For an hour we gathered rocks
and laid them in patterns in the sand
and named our collection
“The Museum of Beautiful and Useless Rocks.”
What did we know of the rocks?
Only the pleasure of choosing them,
of finding just the right rhythm
of reds and blues and grays –
we chose them by shape, by
the way they fell apart, by how smooth
or lumpy they were, we chose them
for no reason at all except that
there was joy in the finding
and joy in the rearranging of the bank.
There was no real end to the task,
it was only that the wind turned chill,
so we left the collection unfinished,
as beauty always is, and returned
to the house for lunch—none of us
feeling the hand that had chosen us,
that hand even then rearranging
us into new stanzas of shifting dust.
my dear ms. trommer,
i am writing to ascertain the address, and hours, and admission policies regarding your recently created “The Museum of Beautiful and Useless Rocks.” i understand you were accompanied by a most perfect cohort of collaborators in the crafting and unfolding of this most elegantly necessary institution. please convey to all those involved, my deeply personal thanks.
please, allow me to explain. i have spent lifetimes wandering this broad and wide earth, driven by an inexpressible ache, an unfathomable longing, in desperate search of any reputable collection, acknowledgement, honoring or celebration of what seems, at least to me, to be the *ultimately sacred* .
that is, the “officially” useless.
of course, general uselessness is not at all rare. this is common knowledge. further, uselessness not only abounds everywhere, but is found in particularly high concentrations wherever one encounters a venue declared to be of “terribly great importance.” the harvest of uselessness in these places of power, held in the highest possible esteem, is so prolific, it threatens to cheapen the inherently unknowable wonder found in the more authentic, deeply holy uselessness beneath.
so, any information you could provide about your philanthropic endeavor would be of tremendous help, and would surely make my heart sing.
i await (i confess, with no small impatience) any information or guidance you would be so kind as to send my way, that i may begin without delay my pilgrimage to your most priceless and singular contribution to the spiritual salvation of humankind.
the LORD (see YHWH;* i will be what i will be*) gave us a most tender, intimate commandment: to consecrate an entire day for the sensual deliciousness, the erotically pleasurable practice of uselessness.
it carefully and quite thoroughly prescribes the effortless absence of even the occasional, *accidental* accomplishment. uselessness, it must be restated, is in fact an *ethical commandment*. it is not a lifestyle suggestion, but a moral necessity. just as daffodils, crocuses and the like must lay dormant for a season if they are to flower, so is our dormancy – our season of uselessness – a *biological, psychological, physical and ethical* requirement. in our prescribed rest we have little choice but to look up from the indispensability of our work, shift our focal plane, change out our lens to capture 360 degrees of that impossible beauty surrounding us at all times.
here, we inhale the fragrance of night blooming jasmine, we find refuge in a ritually cleansing bath, we dress in white, all in preparation of a night of love and pleasure. we are to allow ourselves to become drunk with the gift of touch taste smell sight sound music poetry dance play – so we recall that our lives may in fact not merely be a never-ending problem to be fixed, a relentless list of things to fix, to finish, to repair, to create, to do. in our uselessness we rediscover all that is a gift, feely given, to be opened, again and again, and again.
for no good reason.
i anticipate that, within the architecture of your magnificent museum, i will find in your curated collection some solace, quietude, even equanimity, as i drink deep from the astonishing cornucopia of useless blessings, all housed under one astonishingly needful roof, so we may once more feel showered, every day, every hour, every breath, with the grace of creation. accompanied so deftly by your inviting mr. keats along for the tour, with beauty as truth, and truth as beauty.
i offer my gratitude and thanks in advance, for all you have already offered me, and to all of us, pushing our way through the cracked and hardened soil of a parched and thirsty world.
yours truly,
rev. wayne robert muller co-founder the center for living uselessness
Dear Rev. Wayne, you made my day … I love this response! Yes to the impossible beauty all around us. You are granted a lifetime membership to the museum. 🙂 rosemerry
Beautiful – clear images in my mind! And I’m gifted a comforting perspective of continual “shifting”.
Ah this shifting thanks for the sweet comment, Jazz.
From: “comment-reply@wordpress.com” Reply-To: Date: Monday, March 14, 2016 at 6:42 AM To: Rosemerry Trommer Subject: [A Hundred Falling Veils] Comment: “Two Girls and a Woman Down By the Riverside”
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That the congregation included “a woman” makes this arrangement so much more poignant. That there are adult works in progress, even more.