Moments of Beauty

An essay for the Soaring Twenties Social Club Symposium on Beauty

I wanted, at first, to write about beauty objectively. About what makes it, what are its components, why might it even be a thing. Then, I wanted to write about beauty subjectively. How I see it and what it means to me. Then, I wanted to just describe beauty in various things and places. And in all these wants and thinking about beauty, one thought kept bubbling up from the primordial soup of the subconscious.

Beauty is a moment.

Sometimes the moment comes slowly and fills your spirit gently, like a walk through a forest, where the fractal leaves and just so tumbled rocks and moss-overgrown logs gently instill that calm awe that beauty inspires and stays with you for a while.

Sometimes it builds up and comes suddenly, like a sunset, where the first orange rays hint on the moment to come, like the sound of the orchestra getting in tune before the music begins, and then in a blink of an eye the heavenly glory just kind of hits you.

But it ever seems to be a moment. It ever seems to come and then go. There you were, just a human, and then there you are, something a bit more. And then you're a human again, ready for the next experience of beauty. We can't hold it, or keep it, and, funnily enough, we don't seem to want to. You let it come to you, into you, pass through you. It's enough. It's enough to change you.

These moments of beauty have the power to slice through the mundanity, profanity, insanity of daily life and refresh us for all its demands. To remind us that it's worth it.

All the "objective" side of beauty, the way we build our homes and cities, the notes of a song, the way we dress and groom ourselves, all these seem to me to be the creation of conditions for these moments of beauty to enter our lives.

It would feel good, in a preachy way, to now say that our modern time is robbing us of these moments. But I will say that we are robbing ourselves of these moments, as often, when they present themselves to us, we do not surrender to them. And if it's not a proper worry to occupy us, there's is always a screen nearby to help us not see the small sparks of beauty, blinking into and out of existence like shooting stars. I've seen sunsets ignored and wild flowers walked by without a second glance far too many times to blame the zeitgeist.

Maybe it's important to remind ourselves then, that beauty is not really the shape of our streets, the painting on our wall or the waterfall. For in our preoccupation with the objective, we might forget to remind ourselves that at all times, beauty, the moment, is nearby, but we need be ready to invite it in, and then let it go.

***

It was summer. I was in Rome. Not long before, I graduated from university, and as luck would have it, had a job waiting for me at summer's end.  So what does a young man do with such freedom and time, but go abroad in search of adventure?

I've met her in the language school I was going to in the mornings during my stay. A few years younger and yet more worldly than me at the time.  We've spent one day after class roaming the city to and fro, walking into random streets, discovering monuments and architectural wonders. She had a long flowing summer dress, green, matching her eyes, not revealing much, therefore revealing so much.

We've stopped for dinner. The Eternal City was around us, with all its irresistible patina. The smell and taste of the food in front of us flirting with our senses. The sun was setting over tiled roofs, just behind her head. Red rays of light were dancing with wisps of her brown hair flowing on the summer breeze. She was looking at me with her big green eyes, on her lips an expectant smile.

A moment.

It didn't last.

But it didn't have to.