Month: December 2016

Beauty is as necessary as a life-raft or a trail of breadcrumbs in a dense forest. Is it possible live on beauty alone? Perhaps not. But it can make living possible.

I want the fog of beauty to rise up in a reader’s consciousness and change the world.

It could be the music of the Universe that shapes itself into the notes of everything we experience—terrifying, lulling, devastating, joyous. Beauty could simply be the gift that one hand gives and another receives, both reaching toward the same heart.

I am convinced we cannot live without beauty. We may exist, or survive, but we will not live. And it is entirely possible that beauty may be dependent upon us as well. A tree may exist in the forest without humans there to see it, but it will not be beautiful if its beauty is not perceived.

Love is the music of rain. In a drenching downpour body and soul mesh. I once swam from water to land from an ancient part of my brain. Please bury me at sea.

Creating beauty may be one of the most subversive forms of cultural activism, because it is powerful enough to shift paradigms. To unite us.

A snowy top is only what the mountain allows, a waterfall is what the mountain says it is, an horizon is what the mountain directs. Everything else is added to these things but nothing is more than a tree or mountain.

Rather than grandiose scenery, fabulous effects, spectacular costumes, I prefer simplicity. Give me an empty stage with simple, honest acting–that is beauty.

Beauty is looking into the eyes of a baby only to discover that s/he is smiling back at you. It’s watching a person carry themselves so lightly, so gently, you think they’re an angel.

I believe that beauty reflects both strength and vulnerability, and that sometimes shadow, whether in terms of light, sound or emotion is necessary to enhance the vibrancy of the things we find beautiful. Just as the beauty of life lies in its mystery, so the mystery of life lies in its beauty. In art we call this Chiaroscuro.

Beauty is a celebration of concinnity. At first blush it makes us cognizant of nature’s bounty. This can be in the form of an image or an idea. Beauty is a blessing and as with all divine sanctions it makes us worthy of ourselves and our whereabouts.

Now I put my finger on one point in a line that extends to starbursts and to the green past of wild earth. Grace does no harm.

If we cannot define beauty, perhaps on occasion we may point to its embodiment. The most beautiful architectural interior I have ever seen is in the Pazzi Chapel in the first cloister of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence.

I believe beauty lives in each of us as generosity, kindness and love. It’s part of our physiology as are heartbeats and breath. I find beauty in the interstices, the pauses, in the experience of stillness and sight. When outer reality and beauty connect, beauty is. The canvass on which we can practice and paint is as endless as spirit.

Even the physics of nature displays its beauty: the diffraction of waves on a rippled lake, the august sunset colors of a Rayleigh-scattered sky, the photochemistry of fireflies flashing their yellow green luciferin.

Beauty is always my first choice, along with form, emotion, surprise, and imagery. However, over the years, I have learned that it is the re-combination of these elements that makes me re-define, re-read, and re-consider.

To create Beauty from the pain, chaos and disorder of our lives is a high accomplishment that transcends our physical limitations. It demonstrates that we are capable of transcendence. It demonstrates our spiritual nature.

Two trees stand together in an otherwise naked field, branches linked like young lovers’ fingers, roots twisted into a labyrinth of nourishment and survival.

Thunderclouds building on a hot, humid day. The whirr of the bicycle chain and the rhythm of the cranks, well into a long ride. The still small voice that need not announce itself with ornamentation. Beauty is all possible things.

Beauty is yesterday and my memory of it. Beauty is a November day so brilliantly blue that even the roots of winter wither into forgetfulness.

Emptiness informs life’s unread scroll. My future step is now. And now it’s past.

When we see, we connect. We connect with the thing, and we connect with some deep part of ourselves. We connect with some kind of longing, some kind of love.

But then, I might feel that the cycle of life is itself beautiful. For me, I’ll take a drizzly, grey day, and a walk with my dog over grimy streets. Now that’s beautiful. That and my beautiful wife.

… to be in the presence of, or to witness and be moved by, a calming, lovely experience (even if it’s vicariously created with words on a page) is to reaffirm our humanity in the deepest possible sense. There is nothing greater.

… an impromptu flower arrangement composed of a handful of garden flowers and some dried weeds contained in a plain glass vase. Beauty just feels right on its setting.

Some beauty — older beauty – is brief, or strict, or bare, or spare. This poem aims to be an example of that sort.

I grant you that my interest in ugliness is subject to unfortunate collisions with Studebaker Larks. But you know what I’d do to Baudelaire’s vitres de paradis….

The truth is I never learned to explain the meaning of beauty. When I try now, I discover I can’t do it. But I realize it isn’t going to stop me from going down to that beach, even on blustery days, to find stones for Mary’s table.

Beauty is that quiet messenger of grace that both startles and reassures. Whether an ordinary apple resting on a kitchen counter or scenes flashing from a train window, beauty stops me, makes me whisper, Yes. This!

Let comfort come like the prayer of a goddess, / a great sacramental surrender, a promise / that quiet will blossom, that comfort come.

Beauty interrupts and disrupts routine as it slows me down and suspends me in its force field. Beauty holds my senses, heart, or mind hostage. The most powerful beauty demands all three.

I need beauty in my surroundings. I crave art, and spaciousness. I need light and windows and the play of sun and wind on leaves to feel that my spirit is alive. I need to be close to visual art.

Endlessly-altered view from my window; phrase of Chopin from the piano in a house I walk past; touch of the salt air on my cheek from a southerly breeze; fragrance of something delicious baking next door; first sip of my morning cup of tea—the supply knows no end.