The rainbow and the tones and hues of existence

      What is it about a rainbow, that multi-coloured curved arch that stretches across the sky at the least expected moment, that causes the passerby to pause, take a deep breath and forget for a moment the tedious business of living in a world of unending squabbles? No need to find an answer to that question. Yet most of us have had that experience and wondered at the beauty of the rainbow, its uniqueness, the uniformity of its contours, and felt an inmense internal joy. Perhaps too we have shed a solitary tear witnessing its gradual disappearance and integration into the vastness of the atmosphere.

     Then, minutes, hours, days or months later, we tread the streets of vast urban sprawls, gawk at starkly cold skyscrapers, or see them on television or in the mass media, and comprehend their falseness, the frailty of an economic and social system based on accumulation, competition as a way of life, consumption as the essense of existence, production for the sake of production, the destruction of nature, devastation of indigenous culture, war and the struggle for power as the frame of the mirror reflecting this scene.

    There before the rainbow, with our breath held, our body functions operating in magic synchronization--our imagination dodging stock market crashes, wars to end wars, wars of prevention, wars against "infidels", the screech of cars, the ra-ta-ta of assasin’s bullets, the dumping of nuclear and toxic wastes in empoverished backyards, the clicking of rich men’s champaign glasses and the cries of hungry babies in mushrooming slums--we are overtaken by the feeling of being possessed by an invisible charge of positive energy.

    Is it art? Is it the ability of man to seek, to transcend, to reach out for greener pasteurs even in the midst of aridness? The artist takes his or her material and witnesses how a transformation takes place in both the material at hand and in his or her own consciousness. The scientist looks at his data with awe on the eve of a new discovery, the same kind of awe we feel as the rainbow arches before us. Will this ability to creatively transform existence be capable of outstretching our mundane drive towards destruction?