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There's a proverb; it reads a lil' something like this: gracious speech is like honey-----sweet to the soul, healing to bone and body. How true this is of my dear friend Zoe Cassells, and I am honoured to welcome her to the blog this morning.
Last month, all of us------writers and readers alike------embraced beautiful things in chorus; in conversations, we explored its kaleidoscope of colours and change: beauty is a chameleon; it becomes the one who wears it.
Zoe's response to this theme is, in and of itself, beautiful. It is calm and enlightening; its imagery and style speak of this sweet friend's ability to grasp hold & tight to the uncanny precious.
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Beauty,
You are simple. You are the gleam of crystallised fossils, the curved lines of silk catching a breeze, the flow of the triads moving along the A minor scale, the sun streaming through stained glass, the scent of rosemary in autumn, the cheeks puffing into an old smile,
and even what they call 'imperfect';
the scrapes of rust on a truck door, the childbirth scars, the jumbled dance of static, the cracks in the concrete,
But they have taken hold of you and they have made you difficult They have called you Venus and claimed you as their own. They have worshipped you and thrown you in with their sisters, Desire and Gain.
I struggle to set you apart sometimes. Over the years you've come to be known by another name, Worth.
Sometimes I hate you for that. Sometimes I kick you to the side because you hurt so much.
Sometimes I see you in everything but myself. And I'm only free when you're irrelevant. I leave the house bare-faced, wonderfully unkempt. I see you in another with perhaps ruby lips, and it's not the same as seeing you out in the crop fields or through my kitchen window at night. Not the same because these things don't require you, you are not 'Worth' to them
-----you are Beauty.
They love you. They love you especially with their hands; when they carve chapels, blend oils, type keys. It's just that love is very often a kind of possessiveness. You terrify them when they can't touch you; when you take the shapes of mountains, when you strike with a storm.
You must forgive them. Sometimes they glimpse you in moments, seconds, and they are reminded that you were never related to Desire, Gain or Worth. If only in these seconds, forgive them.
when I remember what you are, I see you everywhere.
Thank you.
Zoe Cassells