My favorite time of year is here. The Indian Summer we’ve been having is wonderful – warm days and cool, crisp nights; it’s time to tap the sugar maples. The fireplace is in use again. The autumn colors are somewhat muted this year, it’s been so dry. But, it’s still beautiful.

I’ve had a few early mornings this week and was able to catch BBC’s The Strand program (it’s on at 4:30am here). Firstly, it amazes me just how much is going on around the world in the Arts at any one time. Secondly, though, I realized that I have always unwittingly connected art and money, as silly as that sounds, and therefore, I set it apart. Art always required money and/or it had to make money. Listening to the program helped me to dissociate the two which was surprisingly difficult to do and not insubstantial. Now, though, what I classify as art no longer has to be so palpable. Art can be for art’s sake. I see art in everything, from my smallest efforts at creating a meal, or in a body’s motion, to the crafting of a sentence, even driving and maneuvering the car – none of which are as obvious as they retrospectively seem. Even the smallest effort at art is worthwhile. It’s been a great week in that light.

For only as an aesthetic phenomenon can existence and the world be eternally justified. (Nur als ästhetisches Phänomen ist das Dasein und die Welt ewig gerechtfertigt.)

“The Birth of Tragedy”
– Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886

Life is the pursuit and experience of beauty. Art imbues meaning, and meaning imbues art. Without condition.