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.