Tuesday, December 18, 2007
The cliche of water and oil can best be reiterated with meaning by comparing Fae - ageless, certain, reflective - and Man, who like oil is crude, volatile, and murky. It is strange then, that of the two - water and oil, Fae and Man - it is the former who fades, depletes, shimmers away. The thistle is replacing the flower, the thorn the rose.
But the thorn is a part of the rose, you contest! They are one, you murmur. Indeed, but it is the rose bloom that offers up the aroma, the resplendent curl of manifold petal, the silken flush, the gentle sigh as lovers press the flower to parted lips. The thorn merely cuts.
Though fraught with vice, oil has one coalescing quality: robustness. And another quality, though this one more subjective: inventiveness. The oil refines itself, transforms itself. The "ideal" is god. The engine, heaven.
-Jonathan M. Dobson