"Beauty is truth and truth beauty;
That is all ye know on earth
And all ye need to know"
***********
Since yesterday morning when I read the above lines in a comment to the last post of the late "Time & A Word" (which still refuses to lie down quietly, as people mystifying continue to find their way into it), I have travelled a near-perfect circle, or more like a spiral, thinking about it.
Gledwood, I haven't the least idea why you asked me if I agreed with this assertion, nor whether you asked anyone lese. Neither do I know what your ideas are about it. Some parallel with mine about the true nature of beauty, perhaps? I think they are not alike at all. Mine does not close any doors.
Whatever, I am really grateful to you for bringing it to me. Unwittingly, you performed a great service - a goodness - which was to liberate my mind, for a while at least, make it work, urge it to travel back and reach for a precious book, in order for it to refresh, revive and go forward some steps. In other words, to breathe life again into some of its dark, forgotten, but valuable corners.
I drafted a long answer, which could have gone on much further. Today, I see that it isn't necessary.
In brief, I do not like the asertion at all. I find it weak, yet dogmatic, domineering. Closed, indiscutable like any non-sequitur; a slogan.
Slogans frighten me and fear is never healthy; fear enchains and enslaves and isolates. Fear breeds insecurity and this is the antithesis of liberation and peace. Makes me think of Orwell, Huxley, Goebbels.
I could be comfortable with "Truth is beautiful", but that doesn't imply its corollorary, "Beauty is truthful". That has no meaning, not to me. In any case, what I think is of no importance at all.
We live in incredibly dangerous times. More than others? Again, I don't know. But I think so, because of everything we are losing that is precious, and what we are replacing it with. I only sense that the whole paradox between more & more channels of communication and the superficiality, inanity, imprecision & lack of originality and quality of these communications does not equal improvement necessarily. I mean, are we listening and seeing more & better? Inter-relating better? Screens are great in their place. It is not real life. It is not nature.
Because we humans have created the means and power to actually make time run faster, time is therefore running out, in relation to those destructive processes of loss.
By replacing nature above all, besides humanity's necessary attributes of humility, respect, listening - all of which take TIME to nurture and expand - with technology, acquisitiveness, consumption, having, image and status symbols, we are losing the best of ourselves and the best reasons and means of being.
That assertion (is it "all we know"?) is a diversion. Beware slogans and clichés. However, I have dumped the 1,500 words I wrote yesterday, because I urgently want you to do this, which will bring much more guidance and value than I ever could.
I urge everybody who is unafraid of asking the hardest questions of themselves and the entire species to go to a bookshop or library and find this book:
And in case you only see those stupid boxes with the red crosses, the book is "Freedom From The Known", by Krishnamurti.
A short volume by Krishnamurti, one of many, but enough in itself. Simple to read & comprehend, reading it is like stumbling into the Garden of Eden from the middle of the Sahara. He will guide you, enlighten and enrich you by making you aware, or more aware, without dogma, without preaching. He will lead you to ask more questions of your own self, your place in all of this. Gledwood, your chief service was to inspire me to go straight away to pick up this book again yesterday. That did me real good.
And the conclusion to my answer is to take this perfect opportunity to share a bit of beautiful truth, a few priceless moments that I experienced on an otherwise fairly Groundhog Day this Monday. The montage [red cross?] is to show you how this little inlet is protected from the strong currents in the River Tagus, as well as where all this happened. See the trees on the left of the top-left pic? The bench I was sitting on faces the water just in front of those trees, with the boats on my left.
At around 5.30 pm, I had taken advantage of our ongoing Indian summer warmth to go down there to read more of my new Sebastian Faulks novel. Another guy was sitting at one of the benches alongside.
Suddenly, around 30 minutes later, I heard a definite quack sound, but looked up too late. I wondered if it could be one of the marine cormorants that I'd noticed newly-returned for the winter the day before. Do they make a sound like that? The other man had immediately got up, walked to the railing and looked straight down into the water. As he walked back past me, he said with a smile, "It's a duck!". I smiled too and said that I'd heard the quack and that it must have escaped from the cages in the garden, about 150 metres behind us - a truly sad place for birds and nowhere for ducks to swim. You've all seen my pictures, Lisbon is full of ponds in all the gardens for ducks, geese and swans to swim freely. but not in Siberia, oh no! If they weren't caged, they'd get shot here.
We were both delighted at this act of daring/folly. Just one duck! We watched it swimming around, such a simple pleasure for the duck, for us, for one of the little stray kittens that lives on the waterside, who clearly had never seen anything like it. Because it doesn't happen.
So, a simple beautiful truth. A triumph, of sorts. I didn't have my camera, but I took the last shot with the phone. The worst pic I've ever published, but it was just to permanise that moment as it came out of the water. I'd have done better, but the memory was full.
And that is the end of my answer. Please read that book!
