Who was it I wonder, who first voiced the now popular aphorism 'be careful what you wish for'?
Shortly after writing the previous post, three months back,
about 'wide achievers', ageism and my lack of success seeking employment, I was offered
and obliged to accept a position at a local hardware store. With my available
time for reading, thinking and writing thereby dramatically shortened I am resorting
once again, as was always my stated intention from the outset I concede, to
publishing extracts from works by other voices than my own. I have, for a
number of years now, when reading (or viewing) developed a habit of recording
passages that particularly resonate for me. I am aware this is an activity rife
with potential for the ever-present threat of the perceived ills of
confirmation bias, but I like to believe that it is also frequently an exercise
in recognising and indeed delighting in the discovery of new or even
conflicting viewpoints to one's own; avenues into new potential directions of
thought and belief.
Many of these notations of mine, in a small collection of
hand-written notebooks, are brief phrases or short sentences that perhaps fail
to stand alone in a forum such as this, removed from the context in which they
were originally published. Therefore, I shall endeavour to focus instead upon
longer passages and, where possible, bring together disparate sources which
nonetheless share a commonality of theme. My first such theme, one which is of
great importance in my life and to which I suspect I shall return, is beauty.
The following extracts are from three sources and move from reflections
upon our built, physical, environment, through perceptual occurrences and responses,
to some final lyrical and metaphysical observations.
Firstly, some passages from The Architecture of Happiness
by Alain de Botton.
Note: Points of ellipsis and square brackets indicate my own
edits, for brevity and clarity.
'Yet if someone was to ask us what was the matter, we might
not know how to elaborate on the malign features of our environment … However,
these can in the end always be traced back to nothing more occult than a
failure of empathy, to architects who forgot to pay homage to the quirks of the
human mind, who allowed themselves to be seduced by a simplistic vision of who
we might be, rather than attending to the labyrinthine reality of who we are.'
(p. 248)
'In medieval Japan, poets and Zen priests directed the
Japanese towards aspects of the world to which Westerners have seldom publicly
accorded more than negligible or casual attention: cherry blossoms, deformed
pieces of pottery, raked gravel, moss, rain falling on leaves, autumn skies,
roof tiles and unvarnished wood. A word emerged, wabi, of which no Western
language, tellingly, has a direct equivalent, which identified beauty with
unpretentious, simple, unfinished, transient things … [By embracing it] we will
have learnt to appreciate a beauty that we were not born seeing. And, in the
process, we will puncture the simplistic notion, heavily promoted by purveyors
of plastic mansions, that what a person currently finds beautiful should be
taken as the limit of all that he or she can ever love.' (p. 260)
'It is books, poems and paintings which often give us the
confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise
never have thought to acknowledge … Likewise, there must have been little
beauty in old stones before Japanese priests and poets began writing about them
… The property developer's reflexive defence of existing tastes constitutes, at
base, a denial that human beings can ever come to love anything they have not
yet noticed. But even as it plays with the language of freedom, this assertion
suppresses the truth that in order to choose properly, one must know what there
is to choose from.' (p. 262)
'We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the
inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the
trees that the buildings we cover them with will stand as promises of the
highest and most intelligent kinds of happiness.' (p. 267)
Next, two brief extracts from the wonderful In Praise of
Shadows by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki.
'The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow
from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms,
presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows
towards beauty's ends.'
'If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves
in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty.'
Finally, the following two short monologues are from the
cinema release version of the film American Beauty, written by Alan
Ball. The first is voiced by the character Ricky Fitts as he shares with his
neighbour, Jane Burnham, a video he recorded of a plastic bag caught in a small
whirlwind on an urban street. It is perhaps, for me, the most beautiful and memorable scene in the film.
'It was one of those days when it's a minute away from
snowing and there was this electricity in the air. You could almost hear it.
Right? And this bag was just - dancing - with me. Like a little kid, begging me
to play with it - for fifteen minutes. That's the day I realised that there was
this entire life, behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that
wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid - ever. The video's a
poor excuse, I know, but it helps me remember. I need to remember. Sometimes
there's so much - beauty - in the world I feel like I can't take it and my
heart is just going to - cave in.'
The second, which contains an almost identical phrase
concerning beauty, is a voice-over by the character Lester Burnham at the
conclusion of the film, seemingly during or after his death.
'I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of
your eyes, the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn't a
second at all. It stretches on forever like an ocean of time. For me it was
lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars. And yellow leaves
from the maple trees that lined our street. Or my grandmother's hands and the
way her skin seemed like paper. And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's new
Firebird. And Janey - and Janey - and Carolyn.
I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to
me, but it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world.
Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much. My heart
fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax and
stop trying to hold onto it. And then it flows through me like rain, and I
can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little
life. You have no idea what I'm talking about I'm sure, but don't worry, you
will someday.'
