What is beauty?

I was asked that yesterday and I'm still trying to figure out the answer. By complete happenstance I got to meet Martha Rich (and Esther Pearl Watson) when they were visiting where I work. These two artists got a grant to go on a "beauty road trip" as research for a multimedia art project that they will later put together and exhibit. I can't think of a more fun thing to do or really, something more worthwhile than to find beauty in yourself and the other people you meet along the way. Especially when you live in the LA area where the idea of beauty is probably so much different than everyone else's in their isolated pockets of the U.S. (or then, maybe not). I tend to read discovered blogs backwards and I've only gotten as far as Marfa, TX (in their road trip blog) where apparently everyone owns a chainsaw (or two) and life is supernatural at night. It sounds like one fabulous adventure. And those girls were sporting some f*a*b*u*l*o*u*s nails from their beauty experience in Pittsburgh, PA.

So I tried to describe my thoughts on beauty and out came something about the honest true essence of something or something along that line and not sounding anything even mildly coherent but I still sort of believe what I tried to say, if I knew what I was talking about. Errrrgh. I thought I sounded stupid but Martha said I didn't but.... really, I sounded stupid. But then.......then......I started to talk about those damn grasshoppers. WTH? About the moulted shell that I photographed the day before. About how transfixed I was with photographing the fresh grasshopper and its shell and that I did not realize until I turned to go back into the house, that a spider had used my head as an anchor for its own giant art project (I had to fight the web to get back indoors). Gawd. What is it with me and those grasshoppers?

Sherry says that grasshoppers represent the power to leap forward, that we should trust our inner voice and act upon it. And I am so ready at this stage of my life to figure out what that next change should be and go for it confidently. But then.....my grasshoppers are all high from eating datura all summer so I'm not sure what kind of symbol that would make them. Stagger forward and drink more wine? I guess that works too.

But I am still fascinated with the little stinkers. After looking at that shell of the grasshopper with all its hairs formerly encapsulated, the eyes, etc., their construction is an amazing design. It's fascinating. When you get to really understand something and just really look at the thing for what it is (and not get freaked out which is my normal way of dealing with grasshoppers), is that beauty?

I think I'll still stick with my incomprehensible blithering about searching for and finding the true nature of something but add one more thing. I think the one thing that I search for in myself (and in others if I can detect it...but usually not) is to find the real part of me that does not have some aspect of trying to please whoever may be in the back of my mind-family, friends, the art directors, people at work, etc. Just my own voice, whatever that is these days.

Valerie always said when it comes to art (or probably anything) you have to please yourself first. And I guess that's the thing I've lost and have been searching for (corporate life can really wear you down).

Do I ever start with the easy solution? No, never. Here's the dictionary definition of beauty...

...the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest).

Well, no doubt I'll keep thinking about this beauty thing AND grasshoppers tomorrow but for the above definition, one little bird friend comes to mind. My darling Starlinka. Everything about her can be described with the above definition. And her favorite word is the word "beautiful." She is beautiful, I am beautiful, Eddie is beautiful, her feathers are beautful, her eyes are beautiful, Starlinka tries to fit the word beautiful into just about every one of her sentences. So, I may not know what beauty is but I live with a little bird who does and sees it everywhere.