Last night, reading in Midnight's Children, a passage caught my heart. It starts out talking about how when one of the characters was growing up, he shared a room with a painter. This painter started out specializing in miniatures, but his paintings grew as he tried to fit "the whole of life into his art."
Remembering the artist and past roommate, this character notices how life refuses to remain in miniature. Refuses to be painted even life sized. The complexities of life and the connections each event, each person, each idea make with each other make it impossible to describe life without constantly expanding the medium.
Frustrating and beautiful and maybe encouraging? Maybe hopeful?
Frustrating for obvious reasons, as a person who attempts to describe their world, or to master it with creativity.
But maybe beautiful and encouraging because all of that complexity and connection points to something deeper and bigger and fuller than life itself. As we attempt to describe life, we add to it, we create another layer, we add another facet. That tapestry, while not managed by human hands, is woven by an artist, a creator. There is hope in the idea that the dizzying variety and complexity and utter unlifesizedness of life points to one whose life sustains it all.
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