Things that are Beautiful, Things that are Not

Somewhat of a rant after 10+ hours spent on Microsoft Teams

Dear Friends,

I spent nearly the whole day yesterday on Microsoft Teams for a deadline and this morning I desperately need some Beauty. I am listening to Kora music, which is helping.

Beauty is everything to me. A Vedic astrologer once told me that my purpose in life was Beauty, and he wasn’t wrong. Beauty is my God and Ugliness is my Hell.

I bought my van, Firefly, for example, for its beauty. When I was van-shopping, I sent my older brother, who is a mechanic, van listings to get his mechanical opinion. He didn’t care for Firefly. Too expensive, too many miles, said that I would regret it. He sent me ads instead for grody rigs that I thought more appropriate for old men with HAM radio licenses. You know the kind I’m talking about: under $10,000 on Facebook marketplace. Pre-fab interiors, worn in couch cushions, old fridges, weird smells. No thanks. When I sprung for Firefly my brother said I had made a horrific mistake, like a silly woman who cares about silly things like a beautiful interior and who has little respect for the practical until she’s broken down in the middle of nowhere in an expensive and pretty van. I didn’t take a word of that to heart. I knew that the van’s beauty was vitally important (and the mechanical aspects were also considered). I knew that if I was going to call a van a home, that it must be beautiful. Otherwise I’d be strangling my soul to death.

If I ever break down in the middle of nowhere, at least I will starve to death surrounded by a richly decorated, sumptuous interior.

If you can believe it, there’s a widespread belief that Beauty is superficial not substance. There’s disdain, for example, for a woman’s beauty and if she draws too much attention to it. There’s disdain for beautiful pictures on instagram. That’s not the real world, people will say. It doesn’t really look like that. They say real life looks more like the heavily engineered yet pragmatic wasteland we have allowed to take over and call normal life.

I wonder if this is a disease particular to the US. The puritanical heritage remains strong. I can’t imagine, for example, Mexicans, who have a culture that packages fruit on a styrofoam tray in the most exquisite mandala-esque arrangements as standard, demanding there by less focus on Beauty. Maybe this is why so many here want to buy dilapidated follies in Europe. It’s not escapism. Well it is, but more kindly I can understand that it’s an escape from Ugliness and a yearning for Beauty. A yearning to make a great and beautiful story of their lives in a culture that celebrates and supports Beauty.

Beauty is naturalness. It is detail and attention. It is sensorial, more than just the visual. I have been maintaining some Beauty practices of reanimating my other senses. Smell especially. The smells of the natural world, but also the smell of smoke to bring myself to olfactory attention. That’s why I’ve been collecting artisanal incense and natural items to burn, and why my father’s house, where I am tucking in for the winter, smells like a pagan altar. Another practice is that instead of getting dressed, I adorn myself. The clothes are vestments. I gaze into my own eyes in the vanity mirror as I choose my adornments.

My expeditions in Firefly take me on undulating wanders between deadening greedscapes of McDonald’s and Office Depots, and soaring landscapes of overwhelming inspiration. In between are sweet towns and exciting cities in the forests and mountains, on the coastline that straddle a bit of both.

Many things in our world are ugly. Like parking lots, Dick’s Sporting Goods, IRS forms, boob lights and that cheap kitchen cabinetry you see in most apartment rentals. Efficiencies, economies, industries, noise. Noise is sometimes the most hideous form of ugliness. I read that the North Koreans are now assaulting South Koreans with ghastly noise. Amazing how the North Koreans understand that noise can be used as a weapon, and yet while I pump gas, Maria Menunous screams at me in continuous ads that I can’t turn off, and which we continue to allow.

Bathing in Beauty is necessary soul health. Tarry too long in the greedscapes and you’ll start to accept a barrage of robocalls, Old Navy mass produced clothing, and burgers in paper bags as the way that life must be. If you don’t get some Beauty quick, you will start to rot internally. You will think it’s not happening, but notice how your Netflix binges and your sweet tooth will start to fill in the void. That’s a sure sign of Beauty deficiency. If you spend years this way, your soul will flee and then you will have to employ a shaman to call it back, or spend 101 nights in the woods alone, or maybe you’ll be lucky and a delicious lover will appear as an act of absolute grace and fuck you back to life. That would be the easiest way back home.

What’s beautiful are the trees and the fog, the eyes of an animal, candlelight, live acoustic music, any Yeats poem, scruffy little dogs, the smell of burning wood, velvet cloaks, and this golden lion statue that I bought in Puebla that’s sitting on my desk.

Beauty is the refuge for my soul. As the Navajo say,

Walk in Beauty,

April

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