Burgeoning Beauty

I’d agree with Martin, that work aspires to share or mourn beauty. But I’m not sure the two are distinct. Grief and joy have a much more complicated relationship than the reciprocal nautre of positive and negative. Maybe I have to believe that because so much of my life and my work is grieving, or because when I was without grief I was also without beauty. But I suspect it’s not a unique experience.

For a very long time I knew the beauty was not for me. My brain still knows this, and still recoils for a moment when beauty enters my perception, even if I have learned to often move past that initial reaction. So what I feel is shame. Shame for wanting it, shame for not having it already, shame for corrupting it with my proximity or even perception. It know that beauty cannot exist in my life, and that to preserve it for the world I must turn away when I find it. Must avoid situations where I might encounter it.

My second reaction is often much better. I can find beauty in many places and often enjoy the ones I imagine are not universally available. I have learned to appreciate the beauty of process and stillness and decay above many other types. It comforts my weary brain to imagine a beauty that evolves and endures rather than merely exists – a beauty that is robust and durable against the abrasion my brain expects to cause.

Visual beauty is difficult for me to consider. It slides from my focus even as I hold it firmly with my intent. My brain knows that this path ends in pain and is willing to distract and manipulate me to keep me away. When pinned in place my brain throws up the beauty I was told to appreciate – was told I already liked, in spite of my own feelings – and suggests that this must be what is required of me. In panicked thrashing it wants to lie to you and wear the mask of a real boy so as not to be discovered as inhuman.

I do not think beauty is a veil or decoration. Not a thing that can be applied or removed. Not even, if I can keep my brain still, a thing that could be corrupted because it has no state other than the one in which it was created. Has no state other than the one in my perception. Beauty is the thing that makes me look away and want more, and the thing that makes me look back once I feel less corrupt. It’s the thing that never turned its gaze down even while I was too ashamed to be seen looking at it.

Beauty is the acceptance I often can’t find for myself, and the freedom of love that comes when restraint is lost. I don’t know what that looks like. Sometimes it’s inky and purple and edgeless. And sometimes it smiles at me closed lipped above rainbow stripes and between big curls or braids.

I don’t think beauty has two faces. I don’t think disgust is the opposite of attraction. Both disgust and attraction are reactions to ourselves, and both can share or obscure beauty. Disgust is what we call shame when we notice our bodies participating – when we can grieve it is beautiful but when it overwhelms us it can be only pain. Attraction promises beauty but promises only obsession – it is the unknown shiny our toddler self reaches for, be it good, bad, or otherwise.

I feel very disconnected from beauty, visual or otherwise. I gave up the version I was taught. It wasn’t mine and it wasn’t beauty. I imagine that peeling back more of my repression – finding more emotions I have gone without – will bring me closer to it. But I also imagine that it will not merely reveal itself to me as I find the components. The pieces I have found thus far have required great work to assemble and do not look anything at all like the picture on the box. They looked a lot more like things I fear to want than things I knew I would love. But I’m doing the research.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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