Now, as to the persistence of matter,
its elements — adamantly discrete, as displayed on the periodic table — and their properties, look. Here are indicative drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. They are replete, as you may perceive, with implicit exclamations.
—
You may concur with Leonardo's insinuations that the particles of materiality, profoundly detached, are yet indiscriminately inclined to merge, as happenstance and affinities occur, which Leo devoutly represents in charcoal, chalk, and ink — cathedral domes, the tendrils of flowers, the inner and outer anatomy of man, scissors, a machine gun, clouds, rocks, forests.
As all substance apparently bonded, a superorb, before hurtling apart in the Big Bang,
—
the ultimate instance of the fatal flaw ** innate in every compounding of elements — a compulsion to disintegrate, decay, erode, dissolve,
latent in Leo's every stroke, the wilting and rotting of lilies, the decline and demise of swans, the wasting of pigments.
—
Cycles vastly suggestive of perpetuity. Eh, Big Science?
** The Japanese, you may
know, say a thing to be beautiful must contain a small imperfection.
** The Hindus, you may know, say without a spot of filth the soul cannot cohere.