Trust Me

After wandering around the truth for quite some time (since the last entry, and indeed I feel like I will continue to do so), I spot something brown looming in the distance. Not sure what, I direct my crew cautiously towards it. I don't want to lose my head, not now that it's been gone for quite some time. I take out my telescope, and peer ahead. A bridge. A bridge to where? We must get closer.

As we sail on, a feeling of great warmth spreads over me. I still don't know where this bridge leads, but I feel like it could be more than truth. And then, a sense of understanding washes over me. It leads to beauty, because the bridge is more beautiful than any I've seen before. So why is it here, leading from truth? Does beauty equal truth? I would like to explore, but am afraid. What if I can't get there? What if only the beautiful can make it to Beauty? I am not beautiful, inside or out, and I feel like the beauty inside is what will allow one to pass. I am not beautiful on the inside in any conventional sense. I am jealous, flighty, distracted, selfish, lazy, and slightly horrible. Occasionally I enjoy others' pain. I have no claim to being captain, not when I've already let others captain the vessel that is me.

So I send you, the pure one, the visually stunning one, to go ahead and see what happens. And there she walks, across the bridge, until we can't see her. We have told her once she gets to the other side, to come back so we could all explore whatever is at the end of the bridge. We wait for some time, hoping that my hunch is right, hoping I don't have to add "murderer" on the list of tragedies that mark my life. And then, a faint voice calls over the ocean. She can't get back past the bridge. We wonder at this strange occurrance as we sail over to pick her up. To go on, or to turn back? We go back to truth, because with this new development comes a new desire to know all.

And then I realize, as I separate myself from the rest of my crew, why she couldn't get back to Truth: because all beauty has a part of truth, but not all truth is beautiful. In that case, is a true depiction of a horrible event beautiful? If, for example, an artist decided to recreate the horrors of war, it would be beautiful, no? Or rape, or abuse, what have you. And is there a difference between the art being beautifully done and being beautiful as a whole? This is what I and mainly my Humanities class grappled with. If the content is horrible, but it is beautifully done, then can we still call it beautiful? I believe so. Beauty does not equal something positive. Otherwise, most of our literature would not be considered "beautiful." Poems dealing about a dark past-beautifully written, yes, but beautiful, no.

Beauty does not equal something positive. This is what my class struggled with the most. They decided that there was a difference between beauty as a whole and beautifully done, and ascribed the intent of the artist to be a major factor in deciding whether or not the thing is beautiful. The example of the cruxifiction was brought up, and because we all know that Jesus died on the cross for something he believed in made it beautiful. But I believe that, using the example of abuse that we dealt with in class, that it can be distressingly beautiful. It is not just beautifully done, it is innately beautiful.

But we were operating under no definition of beauty. According to dictionary.com, beauty is the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest). Which means that those depictions we were using are false. Also, a great part of literature is false. I disagree, dictionary.com. Despair can be beautiful, when it is truthful.