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To most of us, butterflies
and daisies are acceptable; oil and grease isn't There's something exotic
and enchanting ---- almost mythical ---- about the former which we can
romance about and even create art with. They're warm, clean and colourful
things that belong to open spaces and air, in poetry and paintings, and part
of all that's considered sublime in us. The latter are seen, at best , as
some sort of necessary evil we apparently can't do without. A kind of base
cohort of technology which is cold, dark, dirty and full of dingy machines
making mechanical movements.
At the same time oil and
grease are the end results of things like butterflies and daisies - the
product of compression and heating of ancient organic materials through
millions of years. Over geological time these mix with mud and are buried
deep under heavy layers of sediment and earth where the high levels of heat
and pressure slowly change them into liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons which,
being lighter than water or rocks, rise over them and get trapped in oil and
gas fields. We drill through and extract the stuff by pumping it out. It's
just another way of picking flowers or netting small wings.
We don't need a behavioural scientist to tell us
the reason for the schism is only due to association --- which itself is
subjective, chancy, and frequently born of whimsy. There's nothing
intrinsically bad about oil things, nor is there anything inherently good in
butterfly stuff. Magnify an insect's mouth parts a million times and the
majority of people would blanch at the sight of a monster's head only an
entomologist could love. Open up any miniaturised circuitry and no artist
worth his or her vision can help but marvel at the intricate
interconnections and complexity of its bafflingly delicate innards. Both are
works of technology or art, depending solely on where our relationships with
them are coming from.
Associations are powerful and necessary but they
can often be stifling to the point of choking our imagination. in such cases
they should be stood on their heads. Are kitchens for cooking and temples
for praying ? Can the Buddha be found in the dawn lotus but not in manure ?
"One glimpse of it in the tavern caught," wrote Fitzgerald, "Better than in
the temple lost outright." Because, otherwise, it would really be a God of
small things if He resided only in the details of one or the other. |
