Beauty in Progress

I do not believe it is possible to predict where Beauty will reveal itself.  More importantly, I do not believe it is possible to control the revelation.  We think it can be created, but that is merely a helpful fiction that allows us to continue in our work.

We become skilled, spend years refining our abilities and more importantly, our facility with controlling those abilities.  Eventually, the day comes when your hands and eyes are not separate, though they are not the same either.  They are parts, aspects of a whole which now functions as a single organism, not at war with itself.  It is as if for years, you attempt to walk by consciously focusing on the movement of each leg, staggering forward under immense effort.  Until one day, almost without notice, you are able to walk clearly and crisply, moving forward with grace and resolve.

But now you are at the most dangerous moment of all, because it is easy to confuse the ability to walk, the semblance of travel, with the ability to actually arrive at your destination.  It is when we think we have the most control that we are most at danger of utter failure.

My skill cannot force Beauty to reveal itself.  If it could be created by simple Will, I do not believe it would captivate us.  Haunt us.  It would simply be decoration, lending a bit of delight to our landscape.  But true beauty is not mere decoration.  It is not fashion.  It is profoundly subversive, undermining our desire for comfort and consistency.  I cannot will it into being, I cannot bend my skills and the steel into its form.

Attaining ultimate competence, I must abandon the illusion of control.

Is it even Beauty that I am after?