Musings over coffee

The world is an ugly place, and no one likes to think about it, but you cannot ignore the sex offender next door or down the street. I heard of a few people teaching poetry in juvenile hall and it made me wonder, what if there were programs teaching art and poetry in prisons, opening the eyes of sex offenders and others to teach them to give and not take. To teach them to see that the beauty of the world can only be got by giving.
This "must have" mentality that pervades society is in many ways a perversion of a healthy desire for beauty. Recently I went hiking on Mt. Baldy through beautiful trees alongside a stream. At one point there were a few trees completely scarred by the markings of lovebirds and other narcissists wanting to "make their mark on the world." It seems basically human to want to enter in to the beauty we are experiencing, but by cutting up the bark of the tree we damage the very thing we want. We diminish the value when we take. When a rapist takes he diminishes a beautiful thing.
I once saw a mansion with three foot replicas of Michealangelo's David on every fence post. The David is magnificent, but that doesn't mean anyone needs to own it, or display it twenty times over in their front yard. I own hundreds of postcard replicas from museums. I seem to have bought a card for every painting that ever moved me. But the postcards are nearly meaningless. There is an El Greco of St. Francis that I love, because it reminds of the painting that I love, but more so because it was a gift of love from a friend. The others I bought at various places because I thought the experience wouldn't mean anything if I didn't physically take it with me. Strangely, it is the physical representations that have become meaningless over time, not my memory.