Beauty

Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly.
Can anything be inherently beautiful? Or inherently ugly?
For that matter, are the two really opposites?

For example, can there be an ugly flower? Certainly there are a wide range of sizes and colours, perfumes and shapes, but is it possible for a flower to be ugly? I suggest that ugliness is not a physical attribute at all, that all physical things have a beauty of their own, sometimes in their looks, sometimes in their properties. Trees, animals, insects, stones, mountains, mould and bacteria, they can all be beautiful. Even the weather can be beautiful. They can also be fatal and destructive in ways that create awe and trepidation but never a sense of ugliness.

And people? What is beauty and what is not? Popular magazines skew the field by using underage models and airbrushing away blemishes to produce ‘ideal’ proportioned images... of what? The young nymphette. But it is a beauty, none the less. One of many. The more I reflect on it the more I see ugliness as an attitude, an emotional state rather than a physical state.

The naked body, is it beautiful? Or is it ugly? Yes, in context, is probably the closest answer. A body that is relaxed and at ease with the world is a beautiful thing, the most well proportioned body that is in a state of anger or defiance is not beautiful, it’s tenseness and enmity disturbing the viewer.

Beauty seems to go hand in hand with serenity...