Ideal Beauty

[Redbone]

An albatross flying right above the water.

Music.

Lightening.

The variation in human skin color.

The endless shades of green in the spring.

 

[violaine]

I found The Smiths long after they'd disbanded... I was somehow imprinted as a very young girl with this as my ideal image of beauty in every way. It said the things I felt. I thought and still think the woman in the filmclip is stunning. I had my hair in just that style throughout most of my teens, with a similar expression to match.

[YOUTUBE="_U5HpeA_WSo"]How Soon is Now[/YOUTUBE]

I love(d) anything darkly romantic: The Wreck of the Hesperus, The Highwayman, Casabianca, Picnic at Hanging Rock, a lot of English romantic fiction (in the true sense of the word, I can't stand sappiness or things done out of a compulsion, e.g. Valentine's Day, yuck). It couldn't be ugly or gory, it had to have some kind of uplifting quality to it, even if other people thought it was dark. I think certain Japanese women I've encountered on the streets of Tokyo are the most beautiful creatures I've ever laid eyes on. I'm not quite sure how they pull it off but it is something to witness. Perfect poise and grace. I feel very attuned to beauty and see it in some unlikely places (perhaps because I want to see it). This is all right off the top of my head, hard to distill down into words. :/

 

[skylights]

the eyes of the person you love

 

[SilkRoad]

A few random things that come to mind - probably representing various kinds of beauty:

-Psalm 91
-'Byzantium' by W B Yeats - "That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea"
-The Olympic mountain range seen across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, from Vancouver Island
-Michelangelo's David
-Men with dark hair and pale eyes (ie. Benedict Cumberbatch, despite his unbeautiful name)
-The Brahms violin concerto
-Sibelius's "Finlandia"
-U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" live in concert
-Horses running
-Uluru at sunrise
-The bit in the third LOTR movie where Aragorn sings at his coronation
-The look on someone's face/in someone's eyes in photographs taken by the person they love
-The night sky in the desert
-Antarctica

 

[Crescent Fresh]

The moment when I gaze at my lover while he's asleep and breathing gently. That's ideal beauty for me.

 

[Rail Tracer]

[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuDf-IaKFA4"]Lazy Afternoon [/YOUTUBE]

Can listen to this all day... every day.

 

[Mole]

A few random things that come to mind - probably representing various kinds of beauty:

-Psalm 91
-'Byzantium' by W B Yeats - "That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea"
-The Olympic mountain range seen across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, from Vancouver Island
-Michelangelo's David
-Men with dark hair and pale eyes (ie. Benedict Cumberbatch, despite his unbeautiful name)
-The Brahms violin concerto
-Sibelius's "Finlandia"
-U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" live in concert
-Horses running
-Uluru at sunrise
-The bit in the third LOTR movie where Aragorn sings at his coronation
-The look on someone's face/in someone's eyes in photographs taken by the person they love
-The night sky in the desert
-Antarctica

These are lovely images but even the Bible warns us against graven images, so I can't help feeling they leave something out. And the simplest omission is ideal ugliness.

For if we compare ideal ugliness with ideal beauty we have a dialogue. Indeed we have an electric dialogue. We have a drama.

Ideal ugliness or ideal beauty are boring by themselves - they crave their opposites just as we crave our lovers.

Of course ideal beauty and ideal ugliness do not have a serene relationship. They are inclined to disagree and then make up. They are suspicious of each other - how can you trust someone so ideal?

Indeed putting ideal beauty and uglines together is like putting a critical mass in a nuclear bomb. Quite soon the critical mass will be turned into pure energy by the formula E=MC2. And boredom will be turned into passionate love.