“And so it happened again, the
daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the
million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither
as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.” –Zadie Smith,
On Beauty
Hello all!
Welcome to my [new] blog: a drawing
board/receptacle/open forum to which you few, you lucky few, are welcome and/or
victim.
Honestly, I was a little stressed
about coming up with a title for my little corner of the Internet. Because,
being a human, I feared that the slippery terrain of my interior world would
not easily lend itself to a neat little container, and accurate self-representation - letting bloom the million-petalled flower - feels very daunting and kind of
impossible.
But then, a few weeks ago, I read
Zadie Smith’s 2005 novel On Beauty,
and the title quite literally flashed before my face: On Beauty! Of course!
So this is, in part, my homage to
Ms. Smith, one of my most beloved literary idols. I love, in particular, the
gorgeously crossbred, high/low sensibility that characterizes her modernity;
that voice which manages to combine a romantic, Eliot-worthy conscious
narration with the stunning intricacies of a 21st-century Londoner
(or, in this novel’s case, a set of thoroughly American teenagers).
Can you tell I was an English
major? And that I really liked writing essays?
Beyond a virtual Zadie-altar,
though, this blog is actually exactly what it claims to be: everything you’ll
find here involves beauty. It involves what I
find beautiful, which may not agree with what you find beautiful. This is a categorization that surprises me in
its seeming randomness, that sometimes frustrates me and challenges my desire
to articulate what it is, what it means, what makes it that way.
But beauty is also
very precious. Real beauty is not necessarily what keeps me alive, but it’s
what keeps me living.
So: Zadie Smith’s mongrel tongue is
beautiful. “The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit” by La Dispute is equally
beautiful. Rumi’s “The Guest-House,” too: unbearably, ridiculously beautiful.
Because I've only just graduated, and I'm basically still in school-mode, I'm giving you an assignment: What do you find beautiful? So beautiful that it defies your limited human vocabulary? So beautiful that it makes you wanna know more, do more, love more, feel more?
Simple....you and your sister.
ReplyDeleteNot to copy "Danielle" too much (Hi Ma!), but it's those moments of pure contentedness when the 4 of us are together - sitting, reading, and/or not talking - and it feels like there is no where else in the world we are meant to be.
ReplyDeleteOr sometimes, I'll be doing something totally mundane - walking down the street, lying on my couch - and I'll feel this surge of inexplicable gratitude for everyone and everything. It's these moments of simple, comforting joy that make life beautiful, I think.
Also, Lucy.