Beauty

                                                           Fuck the Beauty!

            The forest is on fire. The drunk is asleep in the corner.

A man dies alone.

Nothing is the same

Everything is the beginning.

Everything is born to die, born to be unique in the world. Born to assert their beauty and experience death. Such is a thing of beauty.

            But I see pain in beauty. How is it fair? Our lives are so short, beauty is so fleeting, we  spend our lives longing for it, yet we can never hold onto it. Sometimes I wonder whether or not it’s worth it. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to just look at life as a logical progression and shut out the beauty, because beauty hurts. It makes me want to throw myself…that’s it, just throw myself. Throw myself at it, in it, around it. Embrace it. Yet I know the pain will come. It always comes. Yea nothing is the same and everything is the beginning, that’s where the beauty originates, but everything dies, everything passes, and that gets old.

            Sorry, that was a little bit of a tangent. Sometimes I just like to think you know? But what I’m really trying to get at is does the impermanence of beauty, the destruction that originates from it and follows it, contribute to our longing for it? Yea that sounds like a good question.

            Darwin was a man who studied the beauty in destruction. He saw it all around us. He saw it in the successive generations of each species; they all died only to be reborn with the next generation as a new form. Death must occur in order to provide for new life. In On Natural Selection, Darwin writes:

As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications (Darwin 71).

            I believe that the world is truly a “Tree of Life.” It takes the weak and pushes them down, casting them into the dirt, forming the surface on which it grows. Those that have the fortitude and ability to rise to the top do so and continue to exist through their offspring. It’s a sad truth, I know. Well maybe it’s a little defeatist, cynical even.  I’d like to think that we are each given our fair share, that everyone is dealt the same hand. But that is not the case. Nature shows us this. You all have you own skill sets. You’re own way to survive. But if I am not fit to live amongst the other apes then I cannot be allowed to live. Such is a “beautiful ramification.”

            Forest fires are a hugely important part of a forest. They clear the underbrush so new trees may form and existing trees can receive nutrients more efficiently. The destructive force of a forest fire is beautiful and terrifying. When you look at it with the eye of a naturalist you no longer see this conflagration as a point where hell has spilled onto earth. You see it as an evolutionary force, creation. The duality between appearances, between destruction, and natural fact in nature is what inspires awe in us. It’s what inspired Darwin to look critically at each species, at each plant, at each generation. It’s what makes you feel human.

            The onlooker finds tragedy beautiful. A car wrapped around a telephone pole prompts a line of cars to build up as each person takes their turn looking for the body. They deny it but they love it. It’s their nature. Curiosity at its finest. They are drawn to it because it reminds them of their inevitable end, yet they can breathe a sigh of relief because it’s not them. They’re not the ones fused with their steering wheel; they’re not the one who has earned a twenty-second spot on the evening news.

            And here’s Alexandra with the traffic report:

A man died on the highway and everyone stopped to see.

            Plato illustrated man’s yielding to “repulsive attractions” in The Republic (Sontag 74):

On his way up from the Piraeus outside the north wall, he noticed the bodies of some criminals lying on the ground, with the executioner standing by them. He wanted to go and look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted and tried to run away. He struggled for some time and covered his eyes, but at last the desire was too much for him. Opening his eyes wide, he ran up to the bodies and cried, ‘There you are, curse you, feast yourselves on this lovely sight (Sontag 75).

           

            They cannot help but to feast. Tragedy draws them out. Out of their moral shells. It really is beautiful. The loss of order, of life. It’s the internal struggle between humanity and curiosity that compels them to pull the car over, to get out, to become an observer, a participant in the tragedy. There is beauty in this struggle. Like the “Tree of Life” that is grown from the struggle between life and death for the next generation you emerge from the struggle between morality and curiosity as a newly formed being. Awareness, numbness, mortality covers your heart with its enlightening shade.

            Artists have learned to use the conflicted internal voice to pull beauty from disaster. Andy Warhol’s silk-screened depictions of tragedies play on humanity’s draw towards the crash. In his work titled “129 Die in Jet,” Warhol presents the following…

                   http://www.warhol.org/exhibitions/2012/headlines/img/selectedworks/129dieinjet_large.jpg    

            It is not the presentation of the piece that evokes a response from the viewer; it is the carnage involved in the newsprint. Maybe you’re wondering why this would ever be an image that would be put up on a wall in an art exhibit. It serves the same purpose as any other art piece. It pulls your strings. It makes you question your morality. But there’s beauty in the sensations it evokes.            

            Picture yourself as a passenger on the plane. You know you’re going to die. You look to your left and right. They know they’re going to die too. Your mind grapples with it. Tries to find a way out. Self-preservation. But like a cat trapped in a box your mind flails against the inevitable to no avail. The next day you’re the news.

            And here’s Alexandra with the traffic report:

129 died in a plane crash and everyone let out a sigh of relief.

It could have been you but it wasn’t.

Now you’re standing in an art exhibit with your hands folded behind your back, rolling up onto your toes and you’re drawn in by the death. It’s right there in the image. But you’re safe. It’s pornographic, it’s prurient, no it’s an image of death. But they’re all the same.

            Fuck beauty.

So what if the pain comes? So what if it’s fleeting? So what if it’s so wrapped up in the world, so entrenched in who you are that you can hardly find a grasp? It comes in a flash. Its impermanence is what draws you to it. I’d like to come to terms with this. I’d like to learn to enjoy the beauty in life as it comes, to live in the small moments, because those are the most beautiful.

            Nothing is the same

            Everything is the beginning

The forest is on fire. The drunk is asleep in the corner. Everything is beautiful again.

           

           

   Works Cited

Darwin, Charles. On Natural Selection. New York: Penguin, 2005. Print.

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. Print.