“In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.” (Edward Bulwer-Lytton) The image at the top of this post is Venus of Laussel, found in Marquay, Dordogne, France, c. 23,000 BCE. It is a low relief on limestone block in the collection of Museum of Aquitaine, Bordeaux, France. And how beautiful she is.
The following is an extract about beauty from my Field Notes:
I'd read by Khalil Gibran, that "We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting."
So I waited,
and then one day she was there,
before my tired eyes,
paint melting from her soul
taking flight to her waiting canvas.
Somewhere in my field notes
I had it written that one day she’d show up
to surround me "in a bed of the crimson foils,
of flowers that were so erotic and fragrant.
they would burst through her art with steaming pigments.
In excitement,
and in collaboration with D.H. Lawrence,
I recited to myself,
that she is the "mystery",
the "shining hymn,
and to my lips’ bright crimson rim,
the passion slips,
and down my" weathered "body drips"
to vessels filled.
I fell silent for a moment,
in thought, with my mind fixed on her,
hoping to approach her,
just her,
to avoid the rancid conversations of still life people and stagnant ideals,
because some of them go round and round forever
in those little neon towns that define then rely on human occupation for their habits.
It's important, I thought, to not become existent to a realm in which mediocrity leases the room, because where would we be?
So I held back, knowing that in time they would see us,
and one day want to join in the circumference of our 4 feet.
And it would be them, I thought,
the ones who are forever on the edge of opportunity for tangible talk with tangible people who would join us,
for I could hear their imprisoned and impassioned calls for contact.
Their words; they surface and evaporate into cold illusion, through silent voices that tease this world with parched senses and lament such images of redress.
And not to waste our human time here as though it's a hurried affair, but to lay waste our hurried affairs so that when we awaken from ink black nights to wander in the alleys of our awareness, we can see with 20-20 vision that it's to ourselves we should dedicate our losses of motion.
Don't procrastinate I thought, for all these paper words that begin firm in conventional form, and then land in combinations of contradictions; they evolve into emotional energy transfers.
Mine to yours.
Yours to mine.
You to me.
Me to you.
And look.
When consequences are smart to align with intentions, look at what can happen.
We must always believe that our senses are faithful enough to navigate the irony of self-indulgent images, the one’s that that sear and stifle us.
And see it or not,
they are wrapped in want and need.
When her and I met, I thought "her heart was still a virgin".
So I told her, and she “was blessed" she thought, that "the first" one she'd really given her "heart to was an angel who plucked the feathers off his wings and built a nest for it.” (K. Kojouri)
And “the nest, with its streamers was a final unbidden touch", for "it was what" the angel and not what "human' hands had" "brought to the building, and" that which "could not" be "removed. It was love, he thought, this crumbling chapel: It had been complicated, and thereby perfected, by what time had done to it.”
Centuries ago,
packed deep in our years,
her image etched
upon my eyes,
now watered down
with joyful tears.
"I sat upon a rocky shore,
a place I hadn't been before.
I gazed across the ocean vast,
and found a sense of peace at last.
The salty air it cleansed my lungs.
The gentle breeze caressed my tongue.
I know this place was heaven sent.
To Newfoundland I'm glad I went.
(Anonymous Newfoundland poem)
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