Through out this essay and its two companion pieces Williams makes frequent use of allusions to the senses. She writes of "...sensory impulses of eyes and ears alert toward justice." Again, "... knowledge is another form of democracy, the freedom of expression that leads to empathy." Over and over, she invokes hearing and seeing and also other senses not associated with organs: imagination and empathy recur. Because I'm convinced that our intellects are strong, necessary, and yet limited tools for understanding and living in the world and with each other, I'm drawn to Williams' approach that makes room, in the open space of democracy, for these other ways of apprehending. These give us access to what is outside us, beyond us, and inside us; they also foster appreciation, perhaps even love.
So, what about beauty? Why lift that statement out of the three essays? Perhaps because beauty, as illustrated by the poppies Williams describes in this essay, is vulnerable and precarious and in that way like the "perilous liberty" Jefferson preferred to "quiet servitude." But, vulnerability and perilousness are not quite equivalent. Are they? Isn't there sometime potentially subversive, as well as fragile, about beauty? Perhaps I'm drawn to this statement and this valuing of beauty because beauty has the power to unsettle our rigid, fiercely held absolutes and, as Williams says, open our hearts. And this suggests a link between recognizing beauty and responding with mercy. And, this is why Barbara Boxer held up Subhankar Banerjee's photos of the Arctic. [His Land in Home project.] She hoped that the beauty would move her colleagues' to see more clearly and respond with mercy and empathy.
Here I should have a link to a recording of "For the Beauty of the Earth," or at least to its lyric.
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