First day back on the hill

I did my first Forest Park hike of the season today. I'm making a late start but, then, so did the season. And I don't like walking about in mud and slime. They say it might make it to ninety-five degrees today, but it was just perfect for trudging up the hill, under the trees. It was so great, making my way along the same route as last year, negotiating the same ascents. (And the same nearly invisible roots and rocks that mine the path; it would be a slightly more transcendent hike if I didn't have to spend all my time, eyes to the ground, averting shame and grave bodily-harm.)

Beautiful. And very peaceful; I only encountered five souls in the time I was out. And one was un jeune homme, très beau - brun et aussi doux et juteux qu'une pêche. Yes, yes he was. And therefore easy enough to incorporate into my solitude.... He noiselessly galloped by - like a well-groomed pony - in black shorts and a neon chartreuse t-shirt. He didn't appear to sweat. He didn't appear to breathe. Such youth and grace is damned Olympian! To witness such perfection, such beauty is, for me, the most exciting and confounding thing. He mumbled something at me as he passed. Some sort of shy greeting. But it came out rather like "hurm-bel". A sweet little noise, but not any recognizable word. So I think the kindest thing would be to presume he is merely... foreign. Yes, I believe that would be the generous thing to do....

Coming back the other way, I encountered another fellow - handsome and shirtless - and he gave me a very jolly, open-faced "hello". But he was slightly sweaty and appeared to be actually breathing, so I judged him rather too mortal and therefore uninteresting. One must have standards, after all.

Beauty is enough

As simply as I can say it, I think beauty is sufficient reason for a work of art. It doesn't need to do anything else. It doesn't need to say anything. It most certainly doesn't need to make commentary on the world in which it was created. Beauty is sufficient.

When a work of art is clearly beautiful, when it is able to coherently communicate that beauty, it does something to us. Earliest man felt the imperative to make art, to create beauty, to communicate through art. When we're confronted with beauty, when it communicates its incomprehensibility to us, I believe it makes us something more than we were before. It feeds something in us; I truly believe that it changes our soul. And I believe it's something we truly need for survival, to be in touch with, to strive toward. To make us more. And we are so in need of that - that striving toward beauty, the communion with beauty - as a country, a planet, as humanity. Because I believe, as Dostoevsky said, that "beauty will save the world."