Beauty Matters

This issue of Beauty has been plaguing me lately. What does it mean? Why does it matter? I'm not speaking so much about physical Beauty. I'm speaking of that essential Beauty, the one that sings out life and passion and love and mercy- and magnetism. The Beauty that ignites and invades. The Beauty that can't be diminished or even defined. It can only be lived out- and by doing so it is expanded.

Until recently I have believed that I believe in my own Beauty. I just had a hard time trusting in the ability of others to believe it. I've always believed that I see Beauty in myself, that I have no problem seeing Beauty in myself. But I knew that others didn't see it all the time. That others had a problem seeing it.

But that was alright, because some people saw it. Maybe not everyone, but a few. Enough. I felt like enough of the right, few, key people saw it, knew it, believed it. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear and heart to believe, those gifted ones, those right ones. They saw it. Saw me. My Beauty. Finding those right ones, though. Now that is hard work.

Perhaps I've looked too much to that confirmation, that outward validation of my so-called inward reality. Perhaps that has become so important to me because I can't really see, don't really believe for myself. I always thought it was them. I was just fine. It was everyone else that was messed up. They had the problem. I had it right. But maybe not.

Why else would it matter so much to me, this question of my Beauty and their ability to see it? If I truly believe in it myself, will I even notice if anyone else does?

I've labored under the delusion that if the Beauty is there, but no one else can see it, then I must be doing something wrong. If I have a Beauty, that no one else is able to discern, then I'm distorting it or hiding it- misrepresenting it somehow.

Sometimes I fear that it has been taken, stolen from me. Squelched or squashed. It was there, at some point, but I lost it.

I fear I have learned:
To impersonate Beauty rather than embody it;
To stalk Beauty rather than invite it;
To grasp Beauty rather than embrace it.

But can a Beauty really be robbed of her Beauty?
Can I recall how to Be?
Can I learn to Release?
Can I endeavor to Forgive?

What if I am ugly? Body and soul and heart, through and through. What if I am not much more than the hate and fear and self-loathing that seems to spring up in me out of nowhere and fill me with rivers of doubt?

Surely some beauty is deception. But is all Beauty deception? Vanity? Smoke and mirrors? A soft voice and a mild manner? Paint and pins? A carefully crafted illusion well-planned and honed over time?

My being says no. I believe in Beauty. I believe in the purpose, the power, the purity of Beauty. I believe it has worth, meaning, healing powers even. There is truth in Beauty and access to love. Beauty draws us, comforts and preserves us, and at its highest, a fleeting glimpse of raw and unvarnished Beauty can be a revelation of the Divine.

Beauty matters. It always will.

Just Like the Butterflies

"An intriguing entomological experiment shows that a male butterfly will ignore a living female butterfly of his own species in favor of a painted cardboard one, if the cardboard one is big. If the cardboard one is bigger than he is, bigger than any female butterfly ever could be. He jumps the piece of cardboard. Over and over again, he jumps the piece of cardboard. Nearby, the real, living female butterfly opens and closes her wings in vain."
-Annie Dillard
The Writing Life

I came across this passage today, this very, very interesting passage. And my first thought was, well of course! How like a man!!! After all, how many men have we seen that are just like the butterflies? And you know, exactly, what I mean. I often feel like I am the real, living female butterfly, sitting nearby, opening and closing my wings in vain, while the men around me jump the pieces of cardboard; the big, phony, empty, fakes.

But then it occurred to me, how much I am also like this. Indeed, how much we all are like the butterflies. This world that we live in, it's beautiful. Today, the sun is shining, the sky is a beckoning shade of blue, flung full of softly blazing clouds. All day long, I have been dazzled by this day. But how much more often am I dulled to the days? How much time have I wasted (and indeed, I continue to waste my time) by jumping the piece of cardboard, the worries, the distractions, the superficial and artificial, merely because the cardboard is bigger? It commands more of my attention. It seems to requires more of my mental energy. It appears to be so much more real, substantial. But it's a big, phony, empty fake. It's cardboard! The real, living day is waiting to steal my attention and leave me gasping for breath. It requires more mental energy than I am capable of. It is what is real, and substantial and it is calling me to more. Yet again and again, I find myself jumping the cardboard. And all the while, the day, this day, sits nearby and all around me, beating its wings and beckoning me in vain.

Stand

In a lonely life, these Words have been my only constant companions.
They have never failed me.
They have never deserted me.
And they have stood between me and a world that would tear, and scrutinize, and cage.

These Walls I’ve built are strong.
They are thick and high.
Not one has ever attempted to scale these peaks.
Not one has even desired to force a way through.

But now, here you Stand.
Here
Before me
You Stand.
And my Words fall short.

You Stand.
And everything else falls,
And my Walls come tumbling down,
And my Words fall short.

And I wonder what happened to my Walls.
I marvel at how you managed to walk through them
As if they didn’t even exist.
And at how, like some impossible apparition,
Here before me
You Stand.

You Stand.
And I see that you have always been here.
When I built these Walls, you were there.
And I mixed your light into the mortar,
And I set your warmth into every stone,
So that now they radiate with an incandescent glow,
And even my bitter tears blaze like precious gems.

You have always been part of them,
These Walls.
You have always been inside them.
In all my life,
In all my deepest longings,
In all my truest and most shining moments,
In all these things,
There were echoes, whispers, of you.

And now here
Before me
You Stand.
You Stand guard outside my Walls
And within them.
And you are my Walls.
And you are strong and wise and good.

And my Words fall short.
And you Stand.
And everything falls,
And my Words fall short,
And my Words fall short.

You Stand.
And everything else Stands around you.
And everything wakes, and grows, and is eternal.
And everything is beginning again, and always was, and will never be the same.

You Stand.
And everything else falls.
And my Words fall short.
And you Stand.
You
Stand.

You Look Just Like Bird

“Hey, Denise Richards, how ya doin’ today?”

I turned, flashing a grin, followed by an eye roll. This is Gabe, who insists that I look exactly like Denise Richards. I, in truth, look nothing like Denise Richards, and I happen to find her trashy. But since Gabe cannot manage to remember my real name, no matter the fact that we work together at least six days a week, he continues to refer to me as Denise Richards, and I continue to act as if it is some great joke. One thing about being a waitress—I’m getting really good at hiding my true feelings. Actually, I’ve probably always been good at that….but I’m definitely honing the skill to an even finer point.

“Denise Richards?” Evan shoots his eyebrows up questioningly at this.

“Yeah, doesn’t she look just like Denise Richards?” Gabe explains enthusiastically.

“Ummmm, sure dude.” Evan’s reply does not nearly match Gabe’s enthusiasm. Evan, unlike me, is not a professional true-feelings-hider. He hasn’t had as much practice as I have. But then again, he’s probably never needed to.

“You know who you really do look like, though, is Bird. Doesn’t she look just like Bird?” This comes from Blake and is directed at Ben. Blake and Ben have both been here for a while, longer than I have, and are part of the secret club of survivors.

“Yeah, you do!” Ben responds, as if he has discovered the answer to some long-quested riddle. “You actually look exactly like Bird.”

“Look at her,” Blake continues, “she has the same smile, same big dimples, same blue eyes. The only thing really different is the hair color. Bird was really blond.”

“Who is Bird?” I deliver the question with a perfect combination of wide-eyed confusion and flippant innocence, as if I’ve never heard the name before and am only mildly interested in the resemblance I bear to this mystery person. The truth is I know exactly who Bird is. Her name and her “amazing dimples” are blazoned across my brain in a way that still smarts and stings. And for the record, we do not have the same blue eyes. My eyes are actually not blue-blue. They are a strange combination of blue and green and they shift often from one to the other, which makes their color almost impossible to name or nail down. I happen to really love this quality about my eyes. But no one else ever really looks closely enough to notice. And he certainly never did.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He had come in town that night to take me to dinner and I was full of expectancy. There wasn’t a specific outcome I was expecting. Things had definitely been shaky enough lately for me to know that they could go either way. But he had called, after two weeks of silence, and asked if he could take me to dinner. So that had to mean something. We both knew that we needed to “talk.” So this would be it. We would “talk” and I would finally know where we stood. I was tingly with the anticipation of my relief.

He picked me up and we began the standard debate over where to eat. Not even where to eat, actually, but who would have to choose. Neither of us ever wanted to choose, and we would toss the responsibility back and forth between us. Finally, he caved.

“Let’s go to Ninfa’s,” he said, and my heart gave a tiny flip-flop which I immediately tried to quell. Sometimes I am such a stupid woman. Maybe not so much stupid as typical, and typically, I want to read into everything. We had eaten at Ninfa’s on our first date, so for him to suggest Ninfa’s must be a good sign. It would be the perfect book-end. It could mark our starting over, this time on a better footing.

We drove to Ninfa’s in an awkward silence, punctuated here and there by his forced humor and my forced laughter. All the while I was wondering when and how he would bring it up. He would have to initiate the conversation, I knew that. I could not, and would not try to force him.

We arrived at the restaurant and were greeted by our waitress.

“Hi there, how are y’all tonight?” she asked. “My name is Bird and I’ll be taking care of you. What can I get you to drink?”

He immediately began to banter with her, which was typical. He always gives the waitresses a hard time, even if they’re not pretty blonds with big dimples and even bigger breasts. I tried not to be jealous as Bird brought our drinks and took our orders. I tried not to notice that so far, he had said more to her than to me. Give him time, I told myself, and he’ll get there. He has to get there, because why else would he be here?

As Bird left our table after delivering our food, he finally turned his attention fully on me. Try as I might, I could not resist leaning forward slightly. I could feel the tension mounting. In my head, I was preparing my varied responses to whatever he might have to say. His smile couldn’t have been bigger or his eyes twinklier as he began.

“Isn’t that amazing? Have you ever heard of a name like Bird? I mean, that’s pretty cool isn’t it? Bird!”

I choked down a swallow of water and nodded my head. Clearly, this was not what I had been expecting.

“And those dimples. Those are some amazing dimples. Have you ever seen such big dimples?” He continued in this line for several minutes as I continued to nod stupidly and agree that Bird was indeed an unusual name and that she certainly had large, full, perky dimples.

Every woman will swear to you that she is not the jealous type; in fact, she cannot imagine what jealousy feels like. She will tell you this honestly, and when she says it, she really believes it. This is only because she has learned to lock it tightly and tidily away. But a raging beast of jealousy is still present in some repressed, unfelt part of her, and at that moment mine was snapping and snarling at the bars of its cage. I slammed another iron gate down between my consciousness and that other, wilder, truer part of my heart, then forced a smile and steered the conversation to a more neutral subject.

Over our plates of enchiladas, we made stunted attempts at small talk. The thing is, I have never been any good at small talk. In fact, I hate it. I hate small talk and mind-numbing, soul-killing chit-chat. I would rather go deep, talk about things that matter. Break the surface and dive right in. Anything else seems, to me, a waste of time. Many people find me too intense because of this, but I don’t know any other way to be. This is me.

My patience with the small talk was growing thin, and I was becoming antsy—and angry. This happened frequently when I talked to him. The source of my anger was a mystery to me. I knew that the reaction was not proportional to the situation. It was irrational, this anger that welled when he seemed to be withholding himself from me. I needed to take things to the next level, to at least dip below the surface we had been skimming, and he seemed stubborn in his refusal to wade in. Perhaps if I just opened the way for him, he would take the lead from there.

“So tell me something. Something that makes me go, ‘Wow!’” This is his standard fall-back line, something about him that I both love and hate. I love it, when I feel that he asking this question because he is sincerely interested in what has been going on in my head. And I hate it, when I feel that he is merely requesting me to be more entertaining than I currently am. I’m not sure which I thought he meant this time, but at least it gave me the opening I had been waiting for.

I launched into a story of an encounter I’d had earlier in the week, which I had found inspiring. I told my story with great detail and enthusiasm, but I could feel that he was not engaged. So I tried to delve even further into the meaning I’d found in this random conversation with a man who reminded me of my grandfather, and who shared his faith freely, it seemed, with everyone he chanced to meet.

“It just really inspired me,” I concluded, “to examine my life, the way I’m living it, you know? To try to be really intentional about the way that I live, so that I don’t miss any opportunity or experience.” It had been an important revelation to me, something I’d been thinking on all week, and I expected him to be mildly interested at least. I raised my eyes to his and met silence, a blank gaze.

“Does that make sense?” I persisted. I was starting to feel panicky, the way you might if you jumped off a rope-swing and then realized you had not swung out quite far enough. Like you’d jumped out over the rocks instead of the water and it was all your own fault, because you hadn’t gauged the distance or the depth properly.

He glanced at me, mumbled something both incoherent and noncommittal, and then looked around for Bird to fill his empty glass of tea. It was his eighth glass since we’d sat down.

I fixed my eyes on my plate, forked up a large bite of enchilada and, managing to completely miss my mouth, ended up with gobs of gooey cheese and green sauce dripping and sliding down my chin. There was no way he has missed it, so I immediately tried to laugh it off with a joke about my incredible grace and table manners. I expected him to laugh along with me and let it go. Instead, he looked me straight in the eyes, his first direct contact all evening.

“You know what that is, don’t you? That’s God humbling you for always trying to make everything so much more serious than it really is.”

His words hung in the air for a few crystalline seconds, their echo bouncing through and through the tunnel, the fine, fragile tunnel that was almost completed. The tunnel that I had scratched and scooped and hollowed out beneath the walls, high and thick, that had for so long imprisoned my heart. Then with a rumble and a roar and a final scatter of rubble the tunnel collapsed and my heart was sealed in completely once more.

My mouth snapped shut and I stared, then looked away. It seemed that my words, too, had sealed themselves off completely. I had absolutely nothing to say. I could not utter a single word. As I sat in silence I realized that another beast, darker and more ferocious by far was now leaping against its prison-bars and trying to break free. I could feel my anger, my hurt, my hate simmering and seething below the surface, like a fever in my skin.

I can’t recall that I spoke again through the rest of the meal. As we drove back to my apartment I recoiled as far away from him as possible, cowering against the passenger door with my eyes fixed firmly out the window, fighting off tears. I remember that he asked me once what was wrong, and that I forced the answer up past the rage that rose like bile in my throat.

“Nothing,” I said, and he did not pursue the matter further.

When we reached my apartment he pulled up to the curb and left the motor running, a cue I easily recognized. I pushed the passenger door open and slid down from the high seat. He walked slowly around the front of the truck, his reluctance to face me evident in every move, every gesture, as he drug himself toward me. When he reached me he wrapped one arm awkwardly around my shoulders while I stiffened and stood. He released me quickly and I found that I could not look up into his face. I hated him, not only for his cowardice, but also for mine.

“Well,” he began, “I’ll give you a call. I mean, not tonight. And probably not tomorrow, it’s going to be really busy, but…”

“You know what?” I interrupted, “Don’t. Just….call me whenever, okay?”

He nodded at this, and at the bitter edge to my voice. We both knew that he never could manage to call when he said he would. And we both knew how much I hated that.

He turned to get back in his truck and I turned up the walkway to go inside. The whole way to my door I cursed myself for my impotence; my inability to make him talk to me, to make myself talk to him. I called myself a fool for ever allowing myself to believe in him, and a coward for allowing him to walk away without facing his failure or my wrath. But I did not turn around. I kept my shoulders squared firmly, rigidly from him. As my key turned in the door I could hear his motor as he drove away. It was a haunting, lonely, aching sound, but it was quickly muffled by the thick stone walls that greeted me with such familiar comfort. Not the walls of my home but the other walls, much more fearsome and strong. The walls that had once again swallowed me whole.

All the Nothing That is Left

I am so tired of waiting on you.
You.
Who are you after all?
Who am I to you?
Do you know? Do you care?

I am suspended here, in time, in space
Longing, anticipating,
What for?
For the day you discover you love me?
No. I already know it will never arrive.
For the day when you break my heart?
That day has already come and gone and come and gone and come again.

Now you break my heart daily.
In between the petty and small words that you say
Lie all the chasms and chasms
Of aching, sharp, splitting words that you withhold.

Words that I need,
Words that heal or kill.
It doesn’t matter which way it goes
So long as it shatters this stubborn inertia,
Goes forward, moves back, does something.

Ask me to live without you.
I can!
Beg me to be yours forever.
I will!
But don’t, don’t, please don’t
Abandon me to this crushing oblivion of black uncertainty.

You have left me nothing to cling to
So I cling to all the nothing that is left.
Flinging myself upon it I fall, tumbling,
Into the bottomless abyss of all the words left unsaid.

And this is all that is left,
For me to fall and fall forever
With the darkness growing deeper and heavier
While the light fades hopelessly, inaccessibly, unrelentingly
Further and further away.

And still I wait for you?
And still I wait for you.
You are nothing.
But you are all the nothing I have left.