The stars all around her, my heart beating louder...
Beauty is not only a terrible thing, it is also a mysterious thing. There God and the Devil strive for mastery, and the battleground is the heart of men.
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Beauty - The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality. American Heritage Dictionary
What is beauty? Why is it that we inherently 'know' when something is beautiful to us? I find it as difficult to parameterize beauty as I do humor. When I hear a clever quip, I laugh without thinking about why. Likewise, when I see the rays of a setting sun color the tall clouds of a nearby thunderstorm, I stand in awe. There is abundant beauty in the world, much of it I take for granted. Or is it that I've grown accustomed to it? I woke up especially early this morning and heard the chorus of birds singing, welcoming the day. I've gotten up that early many times but have neglected to stop and listen. Perhaps it's a matter of slowing down, proverbially and literally smelling the roses (or whatever those white flowers are in my front yard, smell like gardenia but I don't think they grow on 8' tall bushes...).
Being a technologist, I find elegance and beauty in such things as an algorithm, a pattern, or master choice of words. Perhaps that's why my favorite programming languages are Perl and Ruby - Perl since it's so amorphous and fluid, and Ruby for it's elegance. Conversely, it's why I find most Windows operating systems to be extremely unpleasant (those who have programmed in Windows know what I mean).
Why does our culture have, in my opinion, such a skewed view of beauty? The emphasis seems all wrong, focusing on a twisted and unnatural biological standard. The dictionary definition above states the properties of "truthfulness" and "originality". Sometimes Hollywood can be praised for originality, but the bottom line for most of popular culture is profit margin. That focus diminishes the 'truthfulness' of art with the engines of marketing, making us want something we would normally not care for? Mass-appeal breeds imitation, further degrading the value of it's self-professed beauty.
Perhaps that's why I shun the Hollywood/New York/Paris view of beauty, I do not like to be told what I ought to like or count as beautiful. True beauty is that which you can recognize without regard to the forces group-think. I simply have to look to nature to be reminded of what true beauty is...
There are three things that are too amazing for me,
four that I do not understand,
the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a maiden.
-- Proverbs 30:18-19
Do you ever want to look at the sun
Do you ever want to see it in someone
Or feel it somewhere
Just a glimpse of an unfettered moment reflecting off her hair.
...
She moves like water touching silver.
And she remembers
grey days, skies of cloud and thunder
It's beautiful to her.
--Beautiful by They Echoing Green
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Beauty - The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality. American Heritage Dictionary
What is beauty? Why is it that we inherently 'know' when something is beautiful to us? I find it as difficult to parameterize beauty as I do humor. When I hear a clever quip, I laugh without thinking about why. Likewise, when I see the rays of a setting sun color the tall clouds of a nearby thunderstorm, I stand in awe. There is abundant beauty in the world, much of it I take for granted. Or is it that I've grown accustomed to it? I woke up especially early this morning and heard the chorus of birds singing, welcoming the day. I've gotten up that early many times but have neglected to stop and listen. Perhaps it's a matter of slowing down, proverbially and literally smelling the roses (or whatever those white flowers are in my front yard, smell like gardenia but I don't think they grow on 8' tall bushes...).
Being a technologist, I find elegance and beauty in such things as an algorithm, a pattern, or master choice of words. Perhaps that's why my favorite programming languages are Perl and Ruby - Perl since it's so amorphous and fluid, and Ruby for it's elegance. Conversely, it's why I find most Windows operating systems to be extremely unpleasant (those who have programmed in Windows know what I mean).
Why does our culture have, in my opinion, such a skewed view of beauty? The emphasis seems all wrong, focusing on a twisted and unnatural biological standard. The dictionary definition above states the properties of "truthfulness" and "originality". Sometimes Hollywood can be praised for originality, but the bottom line for most of popular culture is profit margin. That focus diminishes the 'truthfulness' of art with the engines of marketing, making us want something we would normally not care for? Mass-appeal breeds imitation, further degrading the value of it's self-professed beauty.
Perhaps that's why I shun the Hollywood/New York/Paris view of beauty, I do not like to be told what I ought to like or count as beautiful. True beauty is that which you can recognize without regard to the forces group-think. I simply have to look to nature to be reminded of what true beauty is...
There are three things that are too amazing for me,
four that I do not understand,
the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a maiden.
-- Proverbs 30:18-19
Do you ever want to look at the sun
Do you ever want to see it in someone
Or feel it somewhere
Just a glimpse of an unfettered moment reflecting off her hair.
...
She moves like water touching silver.
And she remembers
grey days, skies of cloud and thunder
It's beautiful to her.
--Beautiful by They Echoing Green