Life Imitates Art vs. Life Imitates Weather

Life Imitates Art vs. Life Imitates Weather

You've heard the expression that life sometimes imitates art.  The thought goes way, way back.  From Ancient Greece comes Aristophanes' famous question about the comedies written by Menander: "O Menander and Life! Which of you took the other as your model?", much later comes  Oscar Wilde, who opined in his 1889 essay The Decay of Lying that, "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life", and later still, in George Bernard Shaw's preface to Three Plays he wrote, "I have noticed that when a certain type of feature appears in painting and is admired as beautiful, it presently becomes common in nature; so that the Beatrices and Francescas in the picture galleries of one generation come to life as the parlor-maids and waitresses of the next."  Does Art lead perception, or is art such an expression of life itself that the question is indeed circular?  Darned if I know.

But today, I am sure of yet another notion, that life imitates weather.  As I sat at the breakfast table watching the fog slowly lift off the inlet outside my window, I could sense the fog lift from my own head.  I could focus on the moment first, observing my self and what I was feeling, what I needed to do for the day, where I would go and more.

Later, by 11:30 or so, the sun appeared, briefly at first, and the pace of things around me quickened.  More people appeared, making more noise.  Things that had slipped my mind were in place again.  I had energy and focus.  I ticked things off a mental list that was more complete than the one that came into focus when the fog first lifted.  The day was perceptibly warming up and so was I.  Even as the sky clouded over, the warmth it left behind sustained the level of activity around me.  I sat briefly by my window and watched the pelicans swoop over the inlet, feeding on fish at low tide.

Later, with the higher tide, human fishermen would return on their boats and fish far less efficiently than the pelicans do.  But still, the warmth would draw them out.  As it was, it sent me back out for more.  The sun returned, sparking enthusiasm for one final errand on my list, one I had put off for weeks because of the effort involved.  

Still the sun sustained us all.  Not a blazing sun, just the sun returning after a few chilly days.   As the sun went down--so early during December here--we relaxed and cooled as the evening did.