The all seeing

Light-hearted philosophy

As we kissed, I could smell her breath of hot dog, onions and beer. It was a long kiss, and it felt like I was being sucked by a vacuum cleaner on full drive, she was a big girl. It could not have been more romantic. Beside us a raging bonfire, and above, a sky full of stars. After breaking away from her vacuum like lips, I took in the stars, gulping for precious air as I did so. Despite being completely pissed, for those few precious seconds that I gulped for air, I became sober. A man, who I had met only a few hours ago, put a condom in my hand and told me to enjoy myself. ‘She’ not a virgin you know, so don’t worry’.

‘C’mon ’ I replied, ‘I know I’m wasted but I ain’t that bad, look at the size of her’

Laughing he said ‘No, you can’t be then, don’t worry we find you a beauty’. And with that I never saw him again.

 

When I see a beautiful sunset across a sky, in its fiery red, I stare in awe of its beauty; it draws me in as I keep my eyes fixated at the mass of red. I want to admire it for as long as I can. There are no external or internal thoughts it is just beautiful. When I see grey buildings, pre-dominating the scenery, I want to be somewhere else away from the ugliness.

 

What is beauty? What is ugliness? Is it programmed in us to separate beauty and ugliness? Why do I differentiate between the two?

When I was a baby, did I distinguish between what I now perceive as beauty and ugliness? I did not know the terms, so I couldn’t categorise them. Only that which was pleasing on the eye and it is likely as a child, I didn’t see beauty and ugliness as I understand it now, but only anger, which I defined as ugliness and the rest which I saw as intriguing; such as bright colours or food. When did I start to distinguish between the two?

Naturally, as I got older, slowly beauty became defined, but how? I lived in London, which as cities go is pretty grey but as a child I never saw it as ugly, after all I didn’t know any better and the everyday goings on probably intrigued me anyway. No, my earliest recognition of defining beauty and eventually defining ugliness was in school and her name was Josephine.

 

 

 

The primary school I went to provokes feelings of consummate innocence when compared to today’s world. I was around nine years of age, when beauty appeared in my mind, singling out something above other things. I can’t recall noticing ugliness only being aware of beauty.

Beauty came in the form of Josephine Francis, a made up name, but a real person. We rarely spoke to each other, and probably the only contact I had with her was in my mind, she would be sitting in the right-hand column of chairs, while I was in the middle role. As far as views go, I could not get one better, even if I had paid for it. While the teacher was teaching us a maths equation, I would glance at her admiring one side of her face and hoping she would turn her head to look at me. Why does one person find another attractive? What is it about that one person that stands above others? Looking back now it’s easy to rationalise the reasons I liked Josephine. She was physically more mature than the other girls, and perhaps that blossoming towards becoming a woman, deeply attracted me towards her. Unfortunately, I never did ask other boys how they felt about her, but as I see her face now in my mind I still feel she was attractive, which makes it an individual attraction, but as I suspect, other boys did find her attractive and then we have a situation where something beautiful is admired by many and here we have a collective conciousnous of beauty.

Josephine, as I said matured quicker than other girls in the class, and to her embarrassment everyone noticed the size of her chest. Boys of 10 to 11 would point them out snickering behind her back. Now I can feel her pain, I myself and my hormones exploded in my first year of secondary school and my embarrassment was made worse by the snickering behind my back. Naturally, her chest intrigued me, but not so much as her wonderful face. She had long light brown hair a cute nose and if I can remember hazel eyes. Josephine was on a pedestal in my mind. Putting girls on a pedestal is the worst thing that a man can do, we can blame the Anglo-French bourgeoisie for that.

Thinking about it maybe our perception of beauty is also linked to mystery. As I said we hardly spoke to each other and she may as well lived in China for the amount of communication we had, that was my fault. Other girls in the class were not mysterious and didn’t attract me so much. Throughout my primary school years, every girl I had sat next to, had without sounding arrogant had a huge crush on me. They would show this in various ways, mostly by grabbing my private parts or showing me theirs. Writing love letters, surrounded by hearts. I of course never thought much about it, in fact I just saw it as normal. And because I thought it was normal, I never classed them as beautiful, while Josephine mysterious, quiet and mature was the first girl and more importantly the first object where the concept of beauty distinguished itself.

I would stare at her face admiring it, I can’t remember what I was saying in my mind, maybe nothing, just in awe of beauty. The teacher would be telling the class how a subtraction works, while I’ll be day dreaming, however, one always gets a knock at the door, so to speak!

‘Miss Jones is looking at you your get in trouble for not paying attention’ as Angie said this she punched me in me nuts, something she did frequently. I would just stare at her mocking her immature action, and then sometimes retaliate by softly slapping her leg.

‘What do you want’ I replied

‘I said…’

‘I heard what you said’ cutting her off.

I knew that Angie liked me; since for ever. Angie was not ugly she was cute and we had known each other since the start of our school days. But, I never thought of her as being beautiful, in the sense that the concept of beauty existed. Angie had long blonde hair with crystal blue eyes, which according the mass media is the definition of true beauty, certainly in those days. Alas, for me and Angie, it wasn’t. I found Josephine’s’ hair and eye colour more to my likening. In fact a thought about how each of us perceives beauty comes to mind. Josephine’s colour was similar to mine, and maybe also her maturity. Did I also see a likeness in me that made her stand out? Is not the one we love, in many cases just an extension of ourselves. Understanding beauty is really not so simple, in fact is it better not to understand it?

‘Why haven’t you copied the work on the board’? Angie asked accusingly

‘Who cares’ I curtly replied

‘You will when Miss Jones find’s out’

‘I don’t care about her’ I said. Angie’s stare changed from accusative to admiration. Angie to her credit was quick and more worldly than all the other girls in the class, maybe lacking a father made her that way. I could also tell her jokes passed onto me from the adults in my life and she would get them, well I assumed she got them. There were many similarities between us, besides lacking fathers we were also only children. Josephine’s maturity seemed somehow different to Angie’s. While hitting me in the nuts was a major piece of entertainment with Angie, we could also communicate with each other, none of which I could do with Josephine. Josephine however, showed maturity through her studiousness her quietness and her looks.

However as a ten year old, I had no idea why I found Josephine so intriguingly wonderful, except for the fact that I loved her looks. Beauty and ugliness, while I was mesmerized with Josephine’s beauty, I did not see other girls as ugly, the concept of ugliness came another time. Even at secondary school when cynicism was engulfing me, I remember calling a girl ugly, but she wasn’t and I didn’t not mean it either.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; but what makes the eye distinguish beauty? As we get older, we understand that beauty is more than a physical thing. But for those who say beauty should be bypassed altogether, can only be faking. There is a physical attraction that our eye takes to and becomes misty when confronted with it. But one must be careful of beauty, because I have learned that beauty can also be ugly at different times. I’ve seen a sea of beauty turn ugly. I once lived in two cities at two different times. When I saw, then one of the cities was ugly and the other beautiful. But, when I saw deeper with more than my heart, a miracle occurred and the first city became beautiful and the other ugly. This miracle happened when I realised that the atoms inside the ugly city, brake away from their bubbles every morning, realising kindness and love; while in the beautiful city, the atoms remained in their bubbles, throughout the day.

But the question remains, how do we define beauty? Or to put it another way, how do each one of us define beauty? Let’s look at it another way, why do certain types of music draw us to their rhythms and others don’t? And if we go beyond the individual, and look to the collective, what then? There seems to be an agreement when beauty is noticed, that sunset, how about that woman, isn’t she beautiful! So, should we go beyond the mere presence of beauty for its definition and suggest that beauty can only be defined through its whole and seeing beauty, just as a physical thing is not a full explanational paradigm to define beauty, we have to see the whole.

I am starting to form some theories now as to Josephine’s beauty, my attraction to her and why I preferred her to Angie. A more relevant question would be,.. if it was today would I feel the same way about the two girls----. Would I find Angie more attractive with her more mature mind, which would overturn Josephine’s looks?

Outside during break-time, the space was surrounded by noise as screaming children, who themselves were letting out their natural energy ,stifled by sitting down for two hours sorting out a maths problem , run around in endless circles. I would wander around alone, but not alone, not mixing with my peers but chatting to the younger kids. Other times I would tag around with members of my own class. We would chat about things making jokes, playing marbles and talking about girl s and then sniggering at the same time….If only they knew!

I don’t remember seeing Josephine talking to anybody, of course she must have done but I don’t remember her having any friends! Was part of her attraction bound in mystery? I was too young to understand such things in those days. And I can’t consciously remember mixing beauty with mystery within my attraction mode. I know it happens…..one ex-girlfriend of mine told me my mysterious demeanour was half of my attraction to her and certain types of men seem to fall prey to mystery. I enjoy surrealist art and part of its beauty is its mystery, but the mystery is the whole point. Am I a surrealist painting?

Is beauty timeless? Physical beauty fades in the ark of time to be replaced by other beautiful things. And if physical beauty fades within us, does a beautiful painting also fade? Once we see that painting the initial beauty fades and we see other things that juggle within our soul. I believe beauty appears in different guises and at different times. And Josephine where ever she is, in the spaces of time maybe finds that her looks are fading away, to be replaced by other facets of beauty; the same as the sun seemingly timeless getting older within each passing second. And music is occasionally timeless in my eyes; I can still hear songs that I loved twenty years ago and feel I’m hearing beauty over and over again. If it’s your thing then it’s in the soul forever.

With beauty is ugliness, but, is there always beauty within ugliness. It makes sense that it does, anything and everything contains beauty if the will is there. Unfortunately, I have also seen pure ugliness with no beauty. But is it because in our minds only ugliness exists and we can’t see or don’t want to see any beauty there? But if we see beauty in everything then beauty doesn’t really exist.

However, if we differentiate between beauty and ugliness then beauty takes on the dynamic and satisfies our ego and our individuality which In turn takes us in circles as beauty may not be real and is only a fictional within our minds.

If there is pure beauty, then it was Josephine because I never thought about it, not initially dwelling on something turns beauty into a bundle of misconceptions, but initially my attraction for her was as fine as seeing the sunset for the first time I was able to appreciate it.

Can we find beauty in everything? Within bad manners, lack of respect, murder. Or would forgiveness be the beauty that breaks those ugly entities. Passion of course turns beauty into ugliness and hence beauty once again becomes ingrained within our thoughts. The man of the enlightenment, of the work ethic buys beauty and keeps it locked up inside his bubble, eventually becoming more and more obsessed as his grip becomes stronger. Beauty does many strange things to some men, with or without a strong pair of glasses.

Beauty then is what we each perceive it to be, which could be our own or collective, but where does this perception come from? Did not this short activity in writing start from this point, let’s not go around in circles then…….but for now I will remember Josephine and then appreciate beauty and when I find it, neither dwelling on it or leaving it.

Yeah….right as if!

Author's Note

Kind of you to read thank you