Nature

Transcendentalists believe in everyone and everything in the universe is connected through the little details of nature like the grass, the trees or even the ladybug in the backyard that all make up the web and cycle of life. In Song Of Myself Whitman writes a verse which depicts an image of contrast between life and death. “This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, darker than the colorless beards of old men, dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.” (Whitman 29-33). Whitman uses the grass as a metaphor as all new life coming from past lives who have long gone and buried deep within the soil, the white hairs and beards represent the dead souls; he uses direct contrast  between the dark and light colors as a metaphor for the contrast between life and death to create a visual image in the reader’s mind. Life comes from death, and death births life in an endlessly circle of nature, every bit of our universe is connected through nature; to die is to simply reach the end of one part of the  web and ready to be reborn into another part of nature.   A stop motion face paint video called Afterlife illustrates this idea of rebirth and nature in a very visual and artistic way. The story is competely told by paint on a woman's face. She starts as a young beautiful woman, and she ages into an old woman who passes away and ends up being just a skeleton buried within the earth; slowly flowers and different kinds of life/plantation start to sprout from within her skull creating a field of flowers. After the flowers wither and fall, she is transformed into the sky and array of stars, a part of the universe ready for rebirth. Slowly a cheetah fetus forms, even with it’s own tiny little heartbeat, the story ends with a wink of the women who have transformed into a full grown cheetah. But it isn’t really the end, it’s just the beginning, just another beginning of another life ready to connect with nature and appreciate the immense beauty it has to offer.      

“Ruby - face paint animation - Official Version”  Youtube.   Emma Allen, n.d Nov 10th, 2013