My body is weary, but my spirit refreshed, like the smell of mint when one puts their face to a patch of it, growing in the bright sunlight. Yet, at this moment, on this particular sultry summer day, my mind has not caught up with my spirit, and my thoughts are slow, thick, and sticky like molasses. It is a combined mood well met for lounging on a boat in tropical waters, with a book in one hand, and a drink in the other; drifting in and out of sleep, almost with every wave that rocks the boat; but it is not a mood that serves, particularly well, a writer’s efforts, at least in the vein of reflections I’d hoped to dabble upon. More energy is required, I think, to reach the higher altitudes of observation and thought than is presently allotted my conscious portion of my feeble grey matter. Yet, it is a chore I’ve tasked myself with: to try and write and post daily, with as much brazen openness as my friendships will endure; to what purpose? Perhaps none, but write I will, even when my mind lags behind on the trail of it. It was a trail I took to yesterday- the trail up Saddle Mountain; a good stretch of the legs, overdue for sure. I’m out shape, and taking a little ribbing from a few friends and family members about putting on a little weight. I don’t know. I don’t feel particularly heavy, but I am aching to get more physical exercise, do far more outings, and perhaps even more physically demanding work, but in my present meditations, I tend to surrender my aches and wants, and accept whatever circumstances I find myself in. It would though, be a lie, to even suggest I wouldn’t look more contentedly into a mirror, if I shed twenty pounds or more. It is, in a fashion, the nature of looking in a mirror, what we hope to see there, that in a manner, I desired to write about; I think, in part, it is beauty that I wish to ruminate upon. I took to the trail Saddle Mountain in hopes of discovering a glut of beauty. Oh to have a soul saturated by the greens of our coastal rain forest: the cheerful plethora of the oxalis which seem like tranquil green pools; the darker rugged greens of the sword ferns; the black veins that burst in a delicate lush green of the rarer maidenhair fern; the majesty of sunlight streaming through the branches of alder, illuminating glowing orbs of greenish gold; the deep greens of the evergreen trees, but too dark for my limited green spectrum to see as green from a distance; the warmer green of the brachen ferns; the waxy green of salal; the yellowish green of a few broad leaf plants; the grasses, the mosses, so many other plants and trees. Yes, the great wet green soaking of the North Coast; such a deluge of green, particularly on a sunny day, when the light fuels and fills it. I was on a sprint for beauty, when I first took to the trail up Saddle Mountain. Not the great rushing from hilltop to hilltop so that my eyes can feast on another view, not a running to look here and then there, but a simple basic need to get my heart rate up, to partially exhaust myself, so that a body and mind, longing for exercise, could settle and appreciate and see more fully the surrounding beauty. I hurried up portions of the trial, and turned around and hurried back down them, only to turn around and rush back up the trail. In this way I stayed relatively near the friend I was hiking with, while getting a much more vigorous cardio workout. After I exhausted my restless energies, I began to appreciate, and attempt to photograph the beauty of my surroundings. There was plenty of beauty to admire going up the trail, but the inspiration for this spring of words, finds its source at the top of the mountain, and mostly in the form of people; two in particular. At the top of the mountain, I chanced to see an older woman, who I’m familiar with, and whose beauty I’ve admired for more than a decade. Yet now…is it too harsh a thing to write - that her beauty has retreated some do to the advances of age? Seemingly, it is a natural enough thing: the fruition of a woman’s beauty, the decades of its alluring appeal, and then its decline, into the sunset of a woman’s life. If it happens to every woman, why does it seem so impertinent to mention it? In a similar way, I can remember a moment long ago, when I was a young man. I was doing some manual labor, for Michael and Petra Mathers, though I can’t recall what precisely. I only remember that is was particularly strenuous. It wasn’t, though, the way an older body takes to strenuous work: with some reluctance, hesitation, and caution. It was the way a young body can relish even the most physically demanding of tasks; even painful exertions of strength, to a young man, can be invigorating. I observed myself in that moment of my life and understood it was inherently fleeting, that of course I too would grow old and unable to enjoy such arduous labor, and so I threw myself even more into the strenuousness of the moment. Indeed at forty-three the aches in my hands, my feet, my hips, my back, the growing impatience of my bladder and bowls, leave me reluctant to take on the demands of some physical tasks. True, I still enjoy physical labor, I still relish it at times, but that is a pleasure obviously in decline; though there is the irony that while some physical work is better suited to a young body, it isn’t suited for a young spirit. I gain weight quicker and hold it longer; in essence I feel my own masculine beauty in decline. There was on top of Saddle Mountain a young man of striking beauty. He was one of the forest service workers, a group of them, about twenty, arrived on the top of the mountain after us. They were clad in fire resistant yellow clothes and carrying their gear, including pulaski fire axes. They were a mix of ages, and a real treat I thought to photograph, but I was surprised to find a young man with, what I thought were, movie star looks amidst the group. A little befuddled, I said to him, “I’m coming back looking like you in my next lifetime.” He said, “Thank you,” and I did the brief inner emotional dance, where I hoped he wasn’t gay, or thought I was gay, and then rebuked myself for still carrying any such inherently discriminatory sensibilities. Later, as I was going through my Saddle Mountain pictures, seeking to validate my perceptions, I showed the two pictures I had of the young man to Cindy Lee and Jillian- the Bear and the Little Fox. They weren’t the best pictures of the young man or close-ups, since his appearance in them was incidental, part of the overall image, but one picture at least showed his face well enough. “He looks like he belongs in the twenties, like a character in the Great Gatsby.” Jillain, twenty two, said. “He looks like a British Bomber pilot.” The much older Cindy Lee remarked; indeed I could see him in that staring role; not the rugged experienced officer, but the more youthful and sensitive pilot, that has to come to terms with the brutality of war, and the almost sadistic choices one must make as a commander. So returning to the mountain top: to the lovely charm of foresters; the delight of a small group of middle aged women, celebrating one of their birthdays; the pleasure of seeing Newt’s genuine excitement; but too, less charming emotions: the judgments that spring to mind my mind when seeing more typical Americans: overweight, self isolating (like me a little), and garbed in cheap foreign made clothes plastered with advertisement, slogans, labels, or trite imagery. I looked out from that mountain top at the marred beauty surrounding us; marred by the patches of clear cutting; marred by the overly uniform forests, all the same species of tree, all the same age, the end result of overharvesting and mono-crops. There was something a little haunting about it- impermanence. Is there a more innate need of the human psyche than that something be fixed, permanent and eternal? I know that nature can’t be eternal, that a forest cannot exist forever, but it still disturbs me to see it so easily removed. I want nature to be nature- to be wild, chaotic, mysterious, and ancient; that to me is beautiful, and lacking that, our wooded areas are at best marred beauty. But one cannot notice beauty, without noticing its dualistic sibling- ugliness. Saturday, I spent yard-selling with the Bear, herself a source of playful mockery for her unbecoming looks and mannerisms. I saw a woman at the several of the sells we went to, severely obese, and who lumbered through the items with a fairly inhospitable grimace on her face; our faces often become the mirror to the facial responses of others; so beauty smiles more as it is smiled more upon, and ugliness tends toward a stern and blank expression, of a force fake smile, as that is what they encounter so often. I too, on the second day of working on this post, saw that gentleman walk by the bookstore, with his grotesque bulbous nose, the size and shape of a small lumpy gourd. It lends him a strange novelty and charm, but still, inwardly, one grimaces at the sight of his nose, at least for a moment. So it is that all the praise we give to beauty must be married to a condemnation of the ugly, if only a mute condemnation; silence can be the harshest comment; no frown more bitter than a forced smile. What beauty have I been spiriting up mountains then to see? Clearly, from the top of Saddle Mountain, we see a marred ecological landscape and one beginning to fracture; we see beauty in decline, weary and old. It is nature, as man is nature, inherently part of her, inherently the holder of her image and ideal, that now hobbles toward the grave, and is ever becoming more grotesque to herself in the mirror. But in the beautiful young man’s eyes, is there hope for tomorrow- that our youth might sprint up a peek, not in search of beauty, but in search of seeing beyond such dualities, in search of healing a fractured human landscape? We know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We know that when a person looks in the mirror it isn’t their shape that pleases them or displeases them, it’s the judgments they’ve acquired about that shape. We know that when we seek beauty, we’re not seeking something that is external to us, we’re seeking internal emotions, thoughts, and experiences that are conditioned, in some way, to external stimuli; that beauty and ugliness are within. I know that standing on Saddle Mountain that even the marring of the landscape shouldn’t diminish me, or my own inner beauty. I know that the obese woman lumbering through the yard sales, the man with the bulbous nose, and my friend Cindy Lee should seem as radiant in their beauty to me as any. We must stop confusing external appearance with internal worth; our internal worthiness should be a given and understood. I suppose that is why many climb mountains; seek the solace of nature; to forget the endless petty judgments they’ve acquired; perhaps even to experience the marvel of seeing themselves and others for the first time. But of course, when one looks in the mirror and sees something they praise themselves for, they resent another being given the same praise for nothing. Tell me how beautiful I am, but don’t tell everyone how beautiful they are, for then what does it mean that I am beautiful? But, honestly, I’ll still be sprinting up mountains looking for beauty. I still crave its impact on me. I still want to feel that way indefinitely. So I stand upon a mountain, staring out into the distant horizon, a little restless, wanting to move, but trying to be still, trying to find the hope, that seems out there, within; and there too the greatest source of beauty; there too the greatest mountain to climb. Oh, to have a soul saturated in Coastal greens.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 22:06:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015