Aesthetic of Decomposition
By Niall Twohig
“If you crush a cockroach, you're a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you're a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria.”- Friedrich Nietzsche
This is not the leaf I initially chose,
but it is the leaf I needed to see today.
Browned,
one quarter chewed or rotted away,
it appears “ugly.”
And such ugliness repels my eye.
I’d usually pass such a leaf over,
focusing instead on a “beautiful” green.
But there’s an aesthetic of decomposition here
that my Western eye is trained not to see,
that eye turns from death,
passes over rot and sickness,
focuses only on freshness, brightness, youthfulness.
If I saw the leaf with that eye
what beauty I would miss!
The little tendrils of the rotted spot
hang on to the leaf’s absence,
reach for parts already returned to the Source.
An aesthetic that says this is ugly
is an aesthetic formed from fear.