'A Blog Oasis' Week 5

“Life is suff’ring,” said the Buddha, forsooth:
It’s the first, and the key, Noble Truth.
It means already we’re sore;
Of pain we do not need more –
That’s like giving more acne to youth!
Gregory Dark




God’s grace is not evinced in the beauty of a rose, but in the perception of the rose as beautiful.
Gregory Dark
I’ve been racking my brains, trying to remember what it was occasioned this thought. Without success. It is a good thought, though, wherever it came from – and … yes, yes … though too I say it myself. Its meaning is not quite ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, nor does it quite rephrase Wilde’s beautiful thought that until you see the beauty in something, you haven’t looked at it closely enough. It’s both of those, my thought, plus another variation of the Zen conundrum – which I have to confess is no conundrum to me!: If there is no-one there to hear it, does a falling tree make a noise?
In man’s development, quite as significant as her invention of the wheel was her appreciation of the beautiful. In many ways, it was more significant.
And that appreciation is being eroded.
Shop roses today certainly still look pretty. Where did their smell go? Fruit today becomes prettier to the eye and blander to the taste. And, in common with all the rest of our food, is heavily contaminated with toxins. Including the so-called ‘organic’. There is now so much contamination in the world that nothing can be uncontaminated. Blue whales are now toxic, so are maggots. Pregnant women now contain so much poison that, in the United States, were those toxins contained in any other receptacle than a human body, such receptacle would not be allowed to cross state lines. We seriously don’t think this should give us pause for thought?
Vested interest is bulldozing us into believing that that which suits them for us to believe is beautiful is indeed beautiful. There is so much potential out there in the world just withering on the vine. We now want our popularity to be as instant as our coffee. If a tv show today isn’t immediately popular with an audience it is pulled. ‘Cheers’ today would not have survived its first season. Nor would ‘Neighbours’. The popularity of jiving does not make ballet redundant, any more than photography invalidates the painted portrait.
Bucks have probably always been held in higher regard than beauty. But that malaise has today become a pandemic. Unless we start protecting beauty, the beast of bucks will devour it. Totally. We start protecting beauty by recognising it.
Let us today, my oh so precious one, reclaim beauty. Let us not be bamboozled into believing McBeauty is real beauty any more than McMuffins are gourmet eating. Let’s find someone we can share beauty with – we can share real beauty with. Let’s look at a truly beautiful sculpture, or gaze on a truly beautiful sunset, or hear some truly beautiful music. If we start to appreciate what is truly beautiful, we will start ensuring that the truly beautiful will also be there for your children.




The Americans call him van Gogh
And his art sells for truckloads of dogh;
‘Twas not always sogh
At his very first shogh
Did anyone buy him? God, nogh!
Gregory Dark