Beauty

                                         Show Me Beautiful

More years ago than I want to acknowledge, when I was 12, my oldest brother handed me a slim volume of poems. A cheap newsprint edition, the pages have turned golden with the edge of each page seemingly dyed buff; parts of the spine have fallen away. The cover is worn and the corners rounded. I’d never buy it at a yard sale. I can’t throw it out. When I pick it up, it opens to my favorite:

Summons by Robert Francis

“Keep me from going to sleep too soon

Or if I go to sleep too soon

Come wake me up. Come any hour

Of night. Come whistling up the road.

Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.

Make me get out of bed and come

And let you in and light a light

Tell me the northern lights are on

And make me look. Or tell me clouds

Are doing something to the moon

They never did before, and show me.

See that I see. Talk to me till

I’m half as wide awake as you

And start to dress wondering why

I ever went to bed at all.

Tell me the walking is superb.

Not only tell me, but persuade me.

You know I’m not too hard persuaded.”

The tenor of the family I grew up in was constricting and gloomy. One neither wished nor dreamed; if perchance this unspoken dictum was forgotten and one spoke of an aspiration, one would be reminded that this was not worthwhile. Moreover, the judgment of beauty was reserved for classical art in museums or certain scores from Beethoven or Mozart. One did not look for beauty in one’s own life, though order and cleanliness were givens. After I read this poem, I knew there was more to see. Was it right to look for beauty in my own life?  How would I find beauty? I wished for someone to take me by the hand and show me. What is the definition of beauty? How do I learn to dream? I wanted someone to “See that I see.”

My twenties brought children. Oh, their beauty! How could there be such beauty? But it felt wrong to immerse myself in loving them. Something held me back; was it fear of loving too much?  I felt constrained; I felt that it was forbidden or sinful to admire or acknowledge their beauty and love them unreservedly. I could not say, “You are beautiful” even when they needed to hear that. Not when they were young, not when they were teenagers, not in their twenties. Neither did I consider myself beautiful in any way, inside or outside. I saw only faults all around.

Now they are in their forties, and I tell them they are beautiful. I’m pretty good at looking for beauty and finding it. I take a moment to enjoy some small tableau, a turn of phrase, a musical passage, the kindness in a stranger’s eyes. I’ve even found some beauty in myself.

Recently, a carrot slice enchanted me. It had escaped the Asian-inspired street taco and occupied a corner of the brown paper carrier that had held the rest of the taco.  The round had a trifecta of colored rings, light orange around the outside, next a pale yellow, and then a creamy white center.  The remains of a clear sauce polished the surface. On that half inch disc sat a white sesame seed, a fleck of red, a bit of green, a black pepper speck. It was a gem glowing in the bright sunshine and did not want to release me from its spell.

But sometimes I am blind.

For once I wasn’t in a hurry as I drove downstate. The late summer sunshiney day a couple of years ago lent itself to meandering. I dawdled at an antique shop, perused an Amish store, and decided upon a scenic turnout. I drove a few hundred feet to a small parking lot that circled a central viewing platform atop a hill maybe 6 feet high. I took a cursory look around as I walked to the stairs; I didn’t see anything particularly scenic. The area seemed to be smack dab in fallow fields, faded now from the summer sun. I climbed to the platform prepared to be surprised.

I was underwhelmed. Fields. Woods that were about a half mile away might be colorful in spring and fall, but now were rather uniformly a dulled green. There was a house not too far away and I thought the residents probably didn’t appreciate the ease with which strangers could look in their windows. I shook my head, “What a strange place for a scenic turnout.” As I turned towards the stairs to descend, a man rushed up. The impressive camera around his neck proclaimed him “Serious Photographer.”

“I’m glad I got here in time!” he said, a bit out of breath.

Bewildered, I asked, “In time for what?” 

“The clouds! I love clouds!”

I raised my eyes just a bit.

How could I not have seen?

To the music of staccato shutter clicks I absorbed the spectacle. Approaching from the west, bulky skyscrapers of clouds dominated the firmament. The topmost billows of brilliant white glowed against the blue while the lower sides wore gunmetal gray. Languidly the shapes metamorphosed; majestic schooners edged across the cornflower blue. As they passed overhead, and just as I did when I was ten and stood across the street from the Empire State Building, I craned back my head in vain to view the apex of the forms.  Somehow their shadows did not fall on us but roamed over the fields.

Companions for the moment, we stayed for half an hour till the forms broke and dissipated. I am forever grateful to that photographer for opening my eyes to the beauty right before me, and the lesson in that.

My “favorites” playlist contains a song in the same vein, “Something Beautiful” by Trombone Shorty. The refrain, repeated many times, is “Show me something beautiful”.

“When the push comes to shove

When the world is hiding love

And is raining and cold

 When the world has grown dull –

Can you show me something beautiful?”

Many days I am still blind. But often, I see beauty. I have but to adjust my perspective.

March 2017