I am drawn to the beauty in understatement. I like earth tones. I wear muted clothing. My mind comes alive at night. The desert inspires me. A forest utterly devoid of human presence electrifies me.
The psychology of this fascinates me, partly because psychology intrigues me, and partly because I may or may not be slightly self-engrossed.
I think it's safe to say that a significant cause of this penchant for simple elegance is a strong suspicion of magnificence. And that likely has a great deal to do with the conviction that anything that promises to blow my mind or sate my senses will ultimately disappoint. It is virtually impossible to oversell me on anything, since any advertisement that garauntees anything more than one step above mediocrity will automatically earn my disbelief.
However, I don't consider myself morose. Melancholic, slightly mercurial, reserved but not perpetually depressed.
And it really isn't that I feel that understatement is just not getting my hopes up, it is truly beautiful to me.
I find stone cold reality exciting because it is reality and not because it is exciting.
But it must be contingent upon something.
I don't believe that there is any way gazing into a dirty reflection could make my heart beat faster if I didn't know that it was a reflection and that it was dirty.
When I am asked on occasion what I base my faith on, if I were being brutally honest and not trying to say what I think the questioner expects or needs to hear, I would say that it is because of this irrepressible smile that is buried so deep and cautiously within that it never shows. Since I have no tangible proof, I suppose you could say that it is a gamble, as if Pascal were wagering with me personally, and I, even as a man vehemently scornful of false hope and empty promises, a man who would die before he bought a powerball ticket, place my bet with a reckless joy. The joy of pressing the pedal to the floorboard, the joy of leaping from an airplane, the joy of sitting in total darkness, joyful because you know Something is there in the darkness beside you.
