those organic instances in which i need to stop and ask myself: why is the world so beautiful?
they make life worth living. looking around and remembering that art is everywhere. I love beauty. I love surrounding myself with beauty. beauty that is not merely of appearance, but saturated in beauty of the spirit. there are countenances with perfect symmetry and no radiance; there are countenances with every angle “wrong” that emanate grandeur, evident in the gaze, in laugh lines, in a glimmer of the eyes.
but the natural world is where that nexus always lies. the natural world tells no lies.
i realized i wasn’t living unless i simply had to stop myself in my tracks and admire the beauty of a flower, or to be entranced by its fragrance. i had these moments where it wasn’t a choice, i simply had to, the impulse overtook me. the beauty of people’s cute little homes and the way they decorated them.. the way people congregated… i think there were times i could even see beauty in the ugliness, in the way it would hurt my heart to see people acting ugly to each other.
i found it curious that an action could have the quality of beauty or the quality of ugliness. i found it exceptionally curious that i could look at the very same world through the very same eyes and either be entranced or repulsed by it depending on what stood out to me that day. reality itself was subject to a parallax effect, its position along the spectrum of goodness or badness, beauty or ugliness, could be entirely dependent on not it but me.
i found myself straddled between the ugly and the beautiful and the standards i’d set for each. i’d jog around my town — i’d experience pure joy from how phenomenal the flowers smelt and looked — beauty. an old diesel engine would rattle past, its emissions right in my face — ugly. i’d see children in the park, their parents bearing witness to the beginnings of their lives like a sunrise of hope — beauty. I’d smell cigarettes, my nose would crinkle, a large shirtless man with a sunburnt upper body in his backyard hurting his lungs and polluting the surrounding air close to the children — ugly. a phone call — my parents, disrespecting one another — ugly. a phone call — my parents, so excited to see me tonight and hear my voice at all — beauty. my parents, wanting to cook for me — beauty. my dad, snappy with my mom — ugly. my dad, so readily able to tell me he wants to see me, loves me, misses me, how many people have been deprived of hearing their fathers speak from the heart like that — beauty.
myself. anger rooted in hurt — how can I define it? it made me act ugly, it made me work to preserve beauty. myself: hopes and aspirations that would at times lead to confusion and misunderstanding — how can I define it? myself: trying my best, wanting to be better — beauty. myself: the mistakes that made that more paramount — ugly. myself: the intentions that were good that didn’t always pan out that way. myself: the stubborn know-it-all who would point the finger. myself: the self-sacrificing one who wanted better for those who hurt him. myself: the one who took for granted the ones who were self-sacrificing and wanted better for me even though i hurt them.
the closer i got, the more the line blurred.
might i always be willing to look closer to afford that luxury to those i might label too quickly.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 