Beauty and the Beholder

Beauty is good,
I think we can all agree. There is something powerful there, a fountain of peace that nourishes the soul. There's something in our hearts that longs for beauty. A moaning abyss at our centre.

Somewhere, deep in the depths, we all long for true beauty in our lives. There is a sad little aesthete sitting at the heart of all of us, with a head full of pictures and poetry and a mouth full of song, lamenting and serenading to a dead audience.

And today I make a stand for that little guy.
And I cry with him against it all that, quite simply:
"Beauty exists."

Aye. Tis true.

There is a wee little heresy tottering about the world these days that mutters in the shadows of dodgy alleyways on the darkest nights with sly confidence that ...
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

But that is quite a silly maxim indeed, that really has very little in it at all.
Which is ironically what it says about everything else.

Because if beauty is only in the eye, well what is it then?
just a shadow? a thought?
Slave to the whim of our moods.
There a moment and lost the next, but never actually there.
Just a thought. Just an illusion. The ethereal fruit of our dreams.
In short, not.
In short, just an flicker in your eye.

It is not so,
beauty is true, it is there, intrinsically, truly being seen and observed, not conjured with smoke and mirrors.
We look upon a sunset and see the light shining wonderfully in our eyes. We see the light, but it is no less real for it. We may grow old and blind, but the light has not changed.
So why should it be any different for beauty?
?

Because it is no different.
The world is not all a grey uninteresting clod of dull vagueness until someone looks upon it and decides some of it looks kinda nice.
No! Sunsets still paint the sky with the colours of the heart. Birdsong still tones the air with joy.
Our eyes ain't got nothing to do with them, they don't give a damn for who's looking at them.
They are beautiful.

And their beauty exists before it is labelled.

We only a leaf is green, because of the pigments therein reflect that colour, and we recognise that.
We only say that something is fast, because it has speed and we recognise that.
We only say someone is old, because they have many years under their belt and we recognise that.
We only say that someone is clever, because they have wit and we recognise that.
We only say something is beautiful, because it has beauty and we recognise it.
These are not labels that we place upon things to give them their speed, or wit, or beauty.
It is a recognition of what is already there.

And as such,
Beauty is more than a label. It remains in all things, to some extent, resting in the furthest star and nearer than the eye.
And that beauty is not dependent on us, and our ability to recognise it or not, because otherwise we are not seeing anything - no flower, no sunset, no star, no piece of art or music in the universe is actually beautiful, we've just labelled them.
But this is not so.
For centuries humanity has fallen to its knees beneath the beauty of the night sky, or bowed before the magnificent rage, the sublime calm of the ocean.
Not before a label, but before a true and awesome beauty.
Deep calls to deep, and our hearts reply,
not in lonely conversation with itself, but with the universe and our God who sustains it.

The eye really has very little to do with it, and neither do we.
We must remember that ourselves and our eyes are the receptors, not the creator.

They only help us see.
And we see only a portion, as though through a mirror dimly. But some see it better than others. Some see it here and not there, and others there but not here. Some people have their hearts open so wide they can see it everywhere. Some can't see it at all.

I daresay that if we saw the true beauty that always surrounds us, we would be blinded.
Just ask my boi Francis.

Death Thou Shalt Die

You have everything to fear, if you fear death. 

Because everything, everyday, may bring you to your last breath. It's tricky dicky like that, death is. It's patient, and then suddenly it's not. Suddenly its right there, staring inches from your face with freaky dead eyes and a pasty cold face, like the worst jump scare ever that just never seems to get old. 

And you know not when its coming.

So why don't we fear?

... 

Sorry that was a bit depressing.

Let's start again.

How about life?

How wonderful is life. How good is it that someone thought to give us such a precious, priceless gift. (And what a beautiful paradox that to keep it we must give it away)

How incredible is it that the earth spins, the sun rises, the moon magnifies, the seasons change, the birds sing, the wind blows, the trees grow, the flowers blossom, and it all moves, a piece of living art.

How fantastic is it that you there are reading this blog, even if you are bored, even if you are not happy, or don't have the strength to smile, 

there you are. You exist. HAZZAH! 

Miraculous. 

How blessed are we.

How wonderful that our bones and bodies and hearts ache. How wonderful is the sting of pain, that fantastic throbbing reminder that 'You are alive my, dear friend. You are alive. Whoopity-doopity-doo! Alive! Alive! Alive! And you can feel.'

How good! Thanks be to God! 

I can't help laughing like a loony even as I write this.

How can we ever stop saying thankyou?

But death...

So why don't we fear?

?

?

?

Could it be?

Just maybe?

That we have no reason to fear?

Not even a right?

That one day our tired aching hearts will find perfect rest?

That, by dying to ourselves and living for others, we can live forever?

What an incredible gift. We must never lose it.

Because, really, we do not have to die. 

Someone else has died for us. 

How can we ever stop saying thankyou?

(An Easter Special)

Crazy little thing called

Happy St. Valentine's Day everyone. I hope it is coming along nicely for you all.

It's an interesting day to be sure, and it sings along rather well with a question I've kept stumbling across recently.

Namely, 'What is love?'
Which I suppose that's at the heart of what this day is about.

What a question.


For most of my life I've always thought of it this way; that love is an emotion.
A warm, fuzzy sort of emotion typically associated with the colour red or pink, in the same way happiness is so obviously yellow (of course, when you really consider it, happiness has more of purpley-brownish tinge). Or something electrifying and shocking, that will suddenly strike like a sneaky assassin and overcome you
like a crusty old sponge would feel dropped into the ocean.
Or that moment when a student looks up to see a hitherto hidden onslaught of SACs on the horizon.
I don't think that so much anymore.

Now, I've begun to see that as a grossly constricted understanding of 'love' - if indeed it holds any truth at all.


And this is why:
If love is naught but a feeling, it is inescapably selfish.
Because a feeling is, by definition, exclusive, and self-centered. No matter how much you feel love for a person, that has no effect on them.
In the same way but on a different road, your anger or hate may have no effect on a person if you still, by force of will, treat them gently and with care.

What affects others is WHAT YOU DO.
Now, of course, our feelings often dictate what we do, if we allow them, and if you feel love for a person, it will probably affect how you act towards them.
But that is besides the point.
The emotion has not included the other person into the exclusive feeling of love.
Only by acts, by decisions, has love been shared.

A typical example is in any newly married couple, who are wrapped in that fuzzy warm love together as they journey off together into the golden sunrise of their new life. But when that fuzzy feeling is gone (as it surely will get bored and sneak quietly out the door like a double-dealing little cat),
when the sunset slips over the horizon and night comes on.
What then?
If love is a feeling and the feeling has gone, what is the point? Why stay.
Feelings are fickle, they come and they go, today then tomorrow. And if a person is only in love as long as the feeling is there,
why stay once it goes.

If love is only feeling.

But personally I can't believe that. I know better than to say that love is for me and my benefit alone. That it is inescapably selfish. And love is the one thing that most surely isn't selfish.
I know that love is more.


So, the answer:
that feelings mean so little, next to nothing. As farts in the wind.

What matters is what you do.
And just so, love is so much more than a passing fancy, any fuzzy, fragile, inconsequential, unsubstantial, emotion.
It is a decision, a will, solidified in an act.

Specifically, as I have come to understand it, wishing the good of another in what you do.
Giving.

What this means is that greatest love is sacrifice. True sacrifice. True gift.
With no thought for yourself, no glory, no consolation to gain, nothing expected in return.
Simply giving, because you love.
Even if you find yourself without,
even if you find yourself hurt,
even if you will lose everything you are and have
you give.

What this means is that love is hard, incredibly so. What ridiculous strength it demands!

It means that love will leave you broken, and empty (although you'll find that somehow, from somewhere, there is always more to give).
Sometimes even unloved in return.

It means love will hurt.

It means that it is not about you.

It means that love is not exclusive, that you can give it to all and anyone.
As simply as with a smile (yes indeed, the glory and power of a forced smile).

It is not important on just one day of the year.

It means that Mother Teresa - living in a perpetual darkness, in a never ending struggle against an ocean of suffering, an unrelenting life of giving everything to everyone she could - loved so much more, so much greater than Casinova, Shakespeare, Paris and Helena combined. And she asked nothing in return.
She was stronger than any one of them.

And she also made that hideous ocean somewhat smaller.

Feelings mean nothing, nothing at all. They dance about us like pixies, ever-morphing
like the trippiest dream, or nightmare.

What matters is what you do.



PS. A curt and dignified nod to Andre F for the idea and solid chat.

Sorry For The Silence

Hullo everyone,

Just letting you know that I'm still here,
you know, still alive and kicking.
I've just been off for a bit, living my life, away in strange and distant lands enraptured in grand adventures and curious shenanigans.

And now I'm back.

And how life hit me hard in the face.

Work, work, work, work, work, and this quiet little blog all waiting for me to walk into my home so as to jump all over me like a small pack of puppies,
rabid puppies that do not shut up,
wolves at heart really.
And I have been neglecting them.

For anyone who actually reads this blog, I'm sorry. You deserve better.
So I find myself apologising again:

As with most aspects of this blog, the posts are capricious as little impish children and seem set to only turn up and wander in as they please.

For me, the days all smudge together into one smooshy soup of deadlines and appointments, with all rhyme and reason to the wind. I love it.
I do not wear a watch (my life is far too busy to be constrained to time), and neither, for that matter, do my posts, it seems. They just turn up whenever they please, by their own whim, like
stray cats and dogs turn up on the doorstep. That is how it is.
They have their own agenda.

So yes, I am sorry, posts on this blog will surprise you as they manage to surprise me, turning up at all unlikely hours and in no fit state.

And for the time in between,
Well I'm sorry for the silence.

Let the Fireworks Sound

You know, in all my life I’ve never seen any fireworks in person, until this year that is. They’ve always looked fine on the television and I’ve heard them popping far away like a distant gunfight,

but it really cannot compare to actually being there …

With the stench of gunpowder in the air

Hearing the launchings clatter through the soft placid night

Seeing the lights dazzling and dancing between the stars

Blazing trails of gold and glitter and

.. the big brown cloud of stardust left after, staining the sky,

waiting for us to breathe it all back in

I never realised just how magical fireworks are before last night.

How perfect a celebration.

Well here we are. Another year, and we're still here.

Huzzah!!!

Let the fireworks sound.

This Year

You know, when I was younger, I used to look up at my parents every Christmas with a certain stupid pity and quiet horror.

Because, simply ...

They got no presents! 

Or, if they did, they were few and generally useless things that one could have no fun with. I’d look up from my army of Bionicles, later video games and books, with a certain sense of dread and foreboding.

Because one day, I knew, that would be me. One day, I’d wake on Christmas morning to find that Santa had not showered me with gifts to keep me happy for another summer. One day, I’d be left without.

Not that such a thought ever worried me for long - there’s no time like the present hey, especially when the present time is ‘Present Time!’

Regardless, time tramples onward through the seasons and no amount of wishful denial can halt it. So this year I find myself with a sad dilemma: It’s been a long slow way, but it seems my dreaded dream has finally crept into reality.

This year, the same synthetic Christmas tree that once dominated my world hardly stands up to my chest. I slept like a bear in winter the night before (when I finally got round to sleeping) and, on waking, I did not bounce into my parents bedroom buzzing with anticipation. I slept in, and was more concerned with breakfast when I finally crawled out from the covers. I didn't get bionicles. I got a shaver. A tool not a toy. What on earth went wrong?

Christmas is suddenly not about the presents anymore.

So what on earth is it about? And how does one cope?
How does one find joy? (Because if you’re not joyful on Christmas, you’re not really doing it right)

Well, It is of course the celebration of CHRISTmas …see what I did there? 😎 - God, the Big Man in the sky, coming down to be with us stinkers as a little darling child, that laughs and cries and dances and sings. And indeed, that is something well worth celebrating.

And there is the peculiar fact that, while today I seem to have finally grown up, I too spent most of my time running around like a kid among kids. Laughing my head of like a loon.

And it is, indeed, a delightful paradox that the year I seemed to have lost Christmas and grown out of it is the same year that I found it.

This year, I found Christmas in the other kids (my darling cousins) as they ran about like crazy little bundles of fun, like pure joy wrapped in flesh and blood like a gift wrapped in paper.

Just playing and laughing and singing, with childish abandon.

Rolling around on the grass in my good jeans.

Doing handstands for my cousins (I can’t do handstands).

Climbing trees too high to be safe and singing to the open sky.

(Sadly, there was no water fight in the end)

Gems of spontaneous laughter.

Dancing through the day with carelessly perfect steps.

Joy.

Welcome To My Blog: an apology

Hullo to you all and welcome to my blog.

I am sorry that you ended up here, I really am. It is a rather small and particular corner of the internet to arrive at, and I’ll admit that it’s not particularly exciting here, at least not yet. Not like all the other things that you could be doing right now - I mean it is summer, Christmas even, and there is a great big wonderful world out there that won’t be there for you forever. Instead you are here.

I suppose that I should apologise.

But no matter, here is my blog. It’s a humble little thing, I know, but make yourself at home.

I really don’t expect that it will will last very long. It is akin, I suppose, to a New Year’s resolution, and, as a rule, such things don’t last long sadly. During these holidays I’ll try to build it up into something sturdy and seaworthy as it toddles along on the waves of the social ocean. Then I suppose we’ll just watch and see if it can weather the stormy school year, exams and all that silly stuff. But for now, here it is.

I apologise for the title. Don’t worry if you don’t get it, you probably shouldn’t get it. No one that I proposed it to got it. There probably isn’t even something to get.

I apologise, too, for my own indecision. This blog will not follow a thread as most tend to; it has no particular subject. Neither is it a journal, expect in a vague and meaningless sense.

I realise that doesn’t leave us with much. 

But it does leave us with Errant Wanderings.

I expect to dance from subject to subject like a mountain goat leaps from crag to crag. I will not talk about literature, or music, or gardening, or the British monarchy, or whatever particular things people find interesting, except by wonderful chance. You could say that this blog is like a box of chocolates…

The intention truly is to be errant. To wander about and see what wonders I find wherever I am led and write about it. Anything could end up here; any flotsam and jetsam that survive the wreckages of my days. Dark things. Mysterious things. Wonders that have never before been seen by you or me. Words that should never be uttered, to the darkest night or the brightest day … 

I am sorry, I really don't expect you will find anything half as exciting.

But, for now, this is just a blog, nothing more. Let us start from there.

I apologise again, I am waffling, and you are already bored. I admit I have much to learn. So, please let me know what you enjoy, what you laugh at, what you cry at, what is stupid, what is incorrect, what (Heaven forbid) is boring. Anything, just let me know. Honestly, I get lonely sometimes and I don’t want to be writing to a vacuum, thinking dumbly that it is listening. That’s really no fun, for any of us. 😊

Cool, that’s all for now. Spread the word if you like what I’m starting up here (whatever that may be). If you think that this post is boring, this blog is boring, and/or I am a boring person, well enjoy that. I don’t blame you.

And it must be an incredible and exciting thing to be bored.