Feeling: abstruse
Listening to: Paula Cole - Throwing Stones
Reading/Watching: Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife

I think we as human beings have a problem with just allowing beauty to exist on its own, in its simplest form.

We are born undiluted, squatty concentrated masses of emotion, and we are cute because we are helpless, and if we were not cute and did not inspire love and protection, we would die. That is the only type of beauty that is undisputed- we are appealing because we must be to survive.

And then the world begins to act on us. The air, the water, the language, the people, the toys we play with, and the worlds we observe in media and literature. All of them shape us, make little scratches and scars, smooth edges and compress outcroppings, until we are recognizable as a person, and not the bundle of raw energy and want that has no identity. And our beauty becomes qualified, conditional, something to be evaluated.

We go out into the world, and it is raw emotion. But then we build, we scrape, we smooth and compress and try to make the beauty ours by altering it. No person can take credit for a field of wildflowers. We can, however, mow it down, build a mini-mall on top of it with small potted trees and fish ponds, and be congratulated on the beauty of our ecologically-conscientious creation.

It is the same with our personalities. We are born beautiful, simply because we are true. And then we try to make ourselves beautiful, or appreciate others' version of beauty, or even reject the concept of inner beauty altogether for the more solid, lucrative potentials, like power, popularity, prestige. They're like cement fishponds over a forest's grave, but we can make them. We can claim the credit for them, because it's something we created, instead of something we simply let exist in its own perfection (which is much harder to congratulate).

Everyone here is trying so, so hard to be beautiful. Trying to create it, mold it, carve it, bleed it. No price is too high, no act is too desperate. Saying nice words, apologies, attempting to be diplomatic or forgiving or fair, when once we were driving on Missouri highways, singing old Matchbox 20 songs into cold night wind. Now we're planting dandelions in the asphalt.

And it was so much better when we didn't have to try at all.

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