Art or Life?

The real imitator. Art or Life?

It was Oscar Wilde who, in his 1889 essay The Decay of Lying, suggested that "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life". I am a great fan of Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde myself.

I relate to him and his ethos more than any other playwright or author - not necessarily as a great author and poet, which undoubtedly he was, but more for the philosophic approach, idealism and wisdom he shared in his writing and just in life.

I happened to take some photographs of the leaves that were piling up in my garden, thrown around by the wind and all congregating in one place, as if hiding from the next onslaught, just hoping that soon, I would collect them all together and find them a home. A final resting place.

There are many fallen leaves in my life at work that, much like this photograph, need to be swept up and placed in the incinerator of ideas and wasted effort. Looking at them lying around makes me feel somehow they may come back to life. They won't.

Oscar Wilde died unappreciated and destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six. That didn't make him a bad man....did it?