Flowers, Beauty & the Meaning of Life
Dahlias rock. Beauty is needed. What meaning?
There’s beauty in a triptych, so let’s hit it:
ONE.
My friend Jeanette shared this exquisite New York Times article with me yesterday: “Flowers Can Teach Us the Meaning of Beauty” by Megan Craig. If you can’t access it, let me drop in a couple of lines that underscore the conversation we’re having in our salon right now:
…a little beauty is not something to dismiss as frivolous. We need beauty as much as light and air, sometimes more.
Jeanette is one of my favorite Beauty Suppliers & Partakers, sending me texts filled with poems and artwork, going on walks with me, in which we both point, yell, swivel our heads, shriek, stop and gawk at an unexpected purple bloom, a rushy golden hue bending from a tree, a sweet scent rising up from some unknown corner. (Can you see us at a museum together? A lot of “wowing”.) Everyone needs a friend like Jeanette. Someone who knows that beauty is a brutal necessity. What do I mean by “brutal necessity?” I’m not sure. I just liked the way those words felt as they floated down from the creative ethers.
Please, find someone like Jeanette and go out and get rhapsodic and crazy over beauty. The world wants you in it, noticing, engaging with all the senses.
TWO.
Why do we make “beauty” a nice-to-have, or something special that sparkles from a podium or stands magestically at the top of a mountain? Imagine if we agreed that having a beautiful life was more important than a meaningful life, or a purposeful life. What the hell is a meaningful life anyway? Go outside and look at a tree, a mountain, a bush, a wee flower bud you love and imagine if we asked these beauties if they’ve found the meaning of life. Or what their purpose was. Oh don’t be so ridiculous Tatyana! Well imagine a world where, upon hearing someone ask you: “Have you found your life purpose?” you could both look at each other for a few seconds and then double over laughing because, C-MON, what a ridunculous fucking question. The purpose of life is to get up close to the bark on the western red cedar and lick it, or to stop at a corner of a city and notice the line of a building that pleases.
What if the purpose of life is to slow down, walk slowly and notice everything?
One morning, my espresso with steamed oat milk and brown sugar was so fetching I took about ten photos. This is often my life meaning/purpose at around 7:30 a.m.
THREE.
What if you went outside not for you, but for nature. And how the hell do you say “reciprocity.” I sure couldn’t. You know what’s beautiful? Flubbing up and shrugging it off. I’m experimenting with iPhone videos. You’re getting the early drafts. Next time I’ll hold my phone horizontally. Oops,
PS. Did you know that trees can live without humans, but humans can’t live without trees?
We have one Salon for Beauty Hunters underway. A second one starting Thursday, Nov. 4, and one starting January 4. More to come!