Is something real, beautiful, or is something put into words beautiful?  I keep looking at the building construction outside my office window, and I keep seeing beauty in the materials, the strength in the colors of the cement and the wood and the steel.  Sometimes the rhythm of nail drivers, sometimes hammers, and even shouts of men’s voices and the crash of the things thrown, have a beauty that is heard.  The saw and the hum of the crane and the bull dozers is constant, like the many voices in unison can be heard, but not the words.

This scene is most welcoming, and almost soothing, in the morning after an hour commute.  Something human is constructive.  With a long day ahead, it is reassuring to believe it will work, that the frustration common in work is always happening, but things will be greater than this–especially the sounds continuing towards the establishment of something new–or even just a new building.

So, is the world filled with useless work?  Is some of this work needless, and wasteful?  Is the only goal to do something every day that you can do?  Or should your job verge, always, on the pleasurable?  Is it important that you be loved, or loved for your role, your position, your job?  If you have no money to spend on your home, do you still have a home?

In utopia, there is no money.  Only endless jobs to do, and therefore continually, and endlessly, make the universe work.  There is no demotions and promotions, related to money, but just achievement, the goal, since this is what makes people happy and proud.  At this point I think of my mother’s home.  For decades now, she has kept a special list, titled, “A Happy Home Recipe.”  It mentions things like love, loyalty, forgiveness and friendship, plus another four that deal with others helping you out, hope, tenderness, faith, and laughter.  For the longest time, I felt this was the most perfect, more beautiful thing of all.  The way I felt as if I were  being hugged, and loved.  I have no memory of being with my mother on a shopping trip to particularly buy this plaque, and I think, this is why I don’t associate its message with money.  I still think of it when I visit my mother.

Now, back to beauty.  Are beautiful things the only things that are real?  To take a thought experiment to the extreme end, the foible of human beings is to assume that beautiful things are naturally rich, and better, and easier.  Take all the glam and money in Las Vegas….  The stores there only have things that can be bought with a mortgage, and it is assumed that if you go to Vegas, you have some money to spend, or invest.  I have been there, and I do admit that my thoughts tend to run on and I see fountains running and spraying with coins rather than water.  It is like money can make the impossible happen.  Is it beautiful?  Is it even real?

Sometimes, I wish for more privacy than the hordes in Las Vegas can give me when I am on a trip or vacation.  The idea, I think, is that crowds there, fill the void common in any city or town.  It is along “the strip” that I am thinking.  In any other city, at a place of beauty, there is no sense of abandon.  That people are carefree and laughing, and not thinking of the priorities that need to be done by next week.  The “strip” is teeming with hordes of people, especially the young and rich, who exude this energy.  There is no rush, no hurry.  Only pleasure and enjoyment.  And, yes, lots and lots of money.  For most people any other trip or vacation cannot rival the wealth and riches of Las Vegas.  The non-stop flow of money in and out.  Taking a cruise to somewhere comes close, though.

So, in my thoughts, I am guessing that beauty is not limited to “real” things.  Every day, I draw breath, at the small things that happen.  The brown hare in our backyard.  The call of the infrequent owl at night when I have opened my window.  The construction sit that builds and moves slowly, by increments, like watching a stop-action camera become conscious and produce a film over months.  I love the first snowfall.  So delicate, and light, as if the snow is the real color of transparency.  I love the beauty of the old parts of town, where artisans have set up shop, creating and selling wares, of beauty and imagination.

I am looking forward to surprising my children to a two week vacation in December, for the Christmas Holidays.  Filling their days with some warm sunshine, and, hopefully, a sense of carefree joy.  To suddenly, one year have a Christmas away from snow, and attending too many get-togethers and parties.  I am sure where we are going, there will be a “Midnight Christmas Party.”