Monomania

One has to love sameness to see the Midwest’s beauty.  Last year’s grasses, an unremarkable tree, punctuate a filmstrip unwinding beside the highway monotonously.  For mile after mile, the same pedestrian elements combine: the brown bare fields, inconvenient gullies, the occasional windbreak, evergreens peppering an expanse of scrubby saplings turning lime with new leaves.

Is it the emerald of the grass, or the heavy look of a cloud that electrifies the scene, charging it with a precious beauty, the kind one can hardly bear to leave behind?  Monomania finds its rewards, the rewards that vindicate its narrow love.