Tag Archives: First Time

Beauty

Posted on by

0

Is beauty all given to youth?  Is it that the only people, and animals, perhaps, that are beautiful, are the young ones?  The beautiful ones, who exhibit, display, or create youth?  Can an old shriveled up grape, its skin wrinkled around a hard flesh, itself around a hard seed, be considered beautiful?  What sort of lighting and lens work would be needed to create the sparkle in this desiccated grape?  Is it because we know the grape at this stage, is nothing, but fibre and inedible pit?

Is even a photogenic old man, with full head of white hair, a slow gait helped along with a carried cane, and dressed in patent brown leather shoes and houndstooth jacket and pants, a sight of beauty?  Is being like this, a sign of health, or a sign of wealth… or, perhaps, a sign of wisdom and knowledge which makes a sight of this old man beautiful?  Is it his cleanliness?  Is it the fact that the clothes look familiar?  A man of strength and girth, and courage, and education, perhaps?  Or am I rating the clothing?  Is this old man beautiful because he has retired, or is it because  memories like this are kept in our minds from the time when we were young children growing up?

So, is beauty, something inside our heads?  We gather from  experience our collective knowledge or what we want to be beautiful.  Is that famous man, Hugh Hefner of the Playboy Mansion, still so virile because of the house-robe he wears in all his interviews?  Is he beautiful, for being daring, and always suggestive of sexuality, which is the domain of young, beautiful, virile, bodies, or because of his status as The Playboy who built Playboy Mansion?  This may be a tough question to ask and to answer, but it takes us one step closer to accepting… and maybe deciphering, the idea of beauty.

I have a definition in my head from one of my professors who spends his time trying to “type” human beings for a living, and it is a very good living, too.  It will take some thought, but one of the most eye-opening theories of human behavior is revealed in the simple definition of garbage.  Garbage, is actually something that does not belong where it is.  For instance, in a garden, we will plant flowers and trees and bushes.  But we always put in all our effort to dig up the weeds, and sometimes we will risk serious disease by using chemical weed killer.  And, for anything that has no more use or has expired, we will discard.

This brings me to why I have a little box, of wood, that I keep the bits of jewelry that I have been given to me by people in my  life.  The very first piece, a bracelet, is still in this box.  I can remember that it was summer, close to my birthday, and my mother had the box with the charm bracelet inside.  She was notorious for giving birthday presents early.  And I, immediately fell in love with it as soon as I opened the box and saw it.  I remember, being so young, looking up, and sparkly-eyed, at my mother.  I said something, like “Wow.  It’s so pretty.  Thank you.” And, to me, this bracelet and the box it is in, are young.  When I think of this box, and when I take this box out, and when I talk about this box, I am young….  That age of a child who has shiny blond hair, carefree, and able, surrounded by love and feeling free to give kisses to demonstrate that I have love to give.

So, from the examples of these five suggestions of beauty, I have a good idea of beauty.  It is most importantly, what we know to be beautiful.  Myself, I go scourging throughout flea markets, and exhibitions, looking for those things that are beautiful.  I will even pay one hundred dollars for a very small thing.  The first moment is always my most treasured thought of the thing I buy.  And, in a way, I find myself addicted to this behavior as something to fill space, to fill color, and to fill accountable time.  It is probably one of the healthiest things I do.  Eating charred meat off the bar-b-que is one the worst habits for my health.

Tomorrow, long after I will have published this to the web, I will start filling my date book with things that I need to do, with things that I have to do, and with things that will be filled in pencil that perhaps I will need to do.  And I do this every week, sometimes, with many deadlines, I will do it daily.  And in these in-between spaces of time, I look forward to finding beauty again.

My First Fiction

Posted on by

0

The first time I wrote, I used pencil, thinking to erase everything wrong and making it perfect.  It was on ruled paper with the red line for a margin on the left hand side.  It is easy to feel creative when what is objectionable on the paper can be replaced with something real and beautiful.

I was a child whose hands could not span the space of the keys on a computer, or, even on a typewriter.  I was, nonetheless excited about writing something called a “story” or what is called “fiction.”  It was a simple story about going home after school.

It didn’t even take up for than a page, and I was “skipping lines,” or, as is the computer-speak, I was “double-spacing.”  I loved the story.  It was fun for me to write about one of the things that always made me happy….  And excited.   It was about home.  It was about change of time.  It was about having the control for myself to decide that I’d be leaving school and walking home.  It felt like I was making the decision.  It felt like the absolute right thing to do.

I handed it in to the teacher.  She had given us class time to write it….  The idea of homework in those olden times was objectionable.  It wouldn’t be until we were at least in grade five or six that there would be an hour of homework a night  and sorts of projects that parents were supposed to help out with.

We didn’t know what our teacher would really do with the stories, but, surprise, the next day, she returned them to us, fully marked with red pen and encouraging words written to support all the markings.  She told us to bring them home for our parents to read!  We were completely excited.  At least I felt like that, as I had always loved books and the stories that teachers read out loud to us, and story tellers told us.

In addition to the sweet,  sweet, chance to have my mom read it and tell me she loved it, was the chance the teacher surprised a few of us with.  Myself and three others were asked to read our stories out loud to the rest of the class!  I was in “Writer’s Heaven!”  Not only did I have the satisfaction of writing something fictional….  But I was going to have people hear (and if I included my teacher, people would read) my work, and I would have the glow of feedback.  These were my friends.  These were my peers.  And….  It was like an International Juried Fiction Prize had been awarded with the authority of my teacher all over the page I wrote!

At this age, I was not a good speller.  And, truly, it was not always the first thought on my mind.  Nonetheless, I knew what the words were. even though they were mis-spelt, so there was no difficulty in creating understanding when I read it out loud.  However, from this high and excitement of class, and then going home, I had quite a great fall.  I showed my mom the page, and she praised me for the work, creating agreement between my mom’s and my teacher’s points of view.  My mom even asked me to read it out loud….  And just like in class, I read it out loud.

We handily clipped this precious page to the fridge.  My pride swelled.  And, now, I was waiting for my dad to get home, and see it too!

As soon as I heard my dad unlock the door and come into the foyer, I happily ran to greet him.  He was excited to see me too!  I quickly told him to go look at the fridge and read my work!!!!

Within minutes, he called to me to come into the kitchen.  “Elissa,” he said, “Do you know something?”  And I was confused, and shook my head as a “No.”

“Well,” my dad said, “I think you have made a spelling mistake…  In fact two spelling mistakes!”

I confusedly shook my head…  “It looks like you don’t know how to spell ‘Arthur’ or ‘light’, “my dad said.”  “Arthur” was our dog’s name, and I had mis-spelled  “streetlight.”  My dad continued, “It is not perfect.  So, the ‘A+++’ your teacher gave you is not real…  You only made an ‘A’.”

My disappointment was great.  I think even at that time, when I was so young, I already thought of myself as a writer.  I was sure that I would always write.  I took a deep breath, and swallowed up my pride, being unable to try to counter argue with my dad.

Even now, when I am so lucky to have ‘Spell Check’ and an ability to read dictionaries, I find the need to double check all my spellings very important.  Sometimes, I nonchalantly disregard the highlighted red markings on the computer screen, but, I am never truly satisfied until I have “fixed” the spelling.