Something has been exquisitely crafted when just looking at it evokes sheer aesthetic pleasure. These things simply feel right somehow. Things like cars, a hand-forged differentially tempered high carbon steel katana, a kick ass set of speakers, a five-octave handmade rosewood marimba, and other musical instruments can be considered to be exquititely crafted. What else can you think of?

The other morning I was thinking to myself, "I'd really like to find a nice bit of driftwood to put in my room." Later that day, walking by the water, I came across just such a piece of driftwood, lying on the path. It was an exquisitely crafted artifact if I had ever seen one, and its creator was the ceaselessly churning ocean, whose numberless caressing hands had fashioned this work of art, blindly and yet perfectly (The river never makes a mistake). The whorls and currents of the ocean appeared to be caught in the smooth wood, frozen fluid dynamics. An artifact without an artificer, other than the whole of the process of Nature, the book that writes itself.

I picked up the piece of driftwood and noticed that it had been used by someone to scrape dogshit off their shoe.

I mean, there's the entire Human Condition, right there.

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