Astounding Ovation

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

There is only the illusion of solace in beauty. If age and disability teach us anything, it is that investing in beauty will never set us free.  Beauty has always been hurled as a weapon.  It has always taken the form of an exclusive club; and supposed protection against violence, isolation and pain, but this is a myth.  It is not true, even for those accepted in to the club.  I don’t think we can reclaim beauty. Magnificence has always been with us.  Always been there in the freak shows—staring back at the gawking crowd, in the back rooms of the brothels, in the fields fresh with cotton, on the street corners in the middle of the night, as the bombs drop, in our breaths after surviving the doctor’s office, crossing the border, in the first quiet moments of a bloody face after the attack is done.  Magnificence was there.

Because we all do it.  We all run from the ugly. And the farther we run from it, the more we stigmatize it and the more power we give beauty.  Our communities are obsessed with being beautiful and gorgeous and hot.  What would it mean if we were ugly?  What would it mean if we didn’t run from our own ugliness or each other’s?   How do we take the sting out of “ugly?”  What would it mean to acknowledge our ugliness for all it has given us, how it has shaped our brilliance and taught us about how we never want to make anyone else feel?  What would it take for us to be able to risk being ugly, in whatever that means for us. What would happen if we stopped apologizing for our ugly, stopped being ashamed of it?  What if we let go of being beautiful, stopped chasing “pretty,” stopped sucking in and shrinking and spending enormous amounts of money and time on things that don’t make us magnificent?

Changes unimaginable would have to be wrought in James Carfax before he had the depth or the power within him from which to draw generous or untainted love. Zenobia had loved weak men herself, when she was alone in Africa, and old memories resurfaced, and old hungers. She had woken to the slow, scalding pain that her love would never be returned. You can draw little from a shallow vessel; the quality of feeling reflects the quality of the man--or woman. The soul with little courage, honor, or compassion may give what they have, but it will not satisfy the larger heart.

Making Love = Being Loving: anything and everything that you put your heart into, including intercourse, a hand shake, kissing, a love letter, a peace offering, S/M, art, music, masturbation, fetishes, fantasies, a phone call, a warm embrace, whatever pleases you, whatever feels good, the sky is the limit. I dare you to count the ways you can single-handedly make love to the planet or yourself or your best friend or your new lover.

And she remembered something Maurice had said, so long ago. "Never fear going in circles, Maisie. The next time around, you'll see something you missed before--that's if your mind is open. And you will be different, and it will be better."

Perhaps we shouldn't try to answer the questions now--let's just note them down. Maurice always said the power in a question is not in the answer, it's in the way the imagination gets busy when the question is at work.

The path that lies between you and that book you dreamed of is actually not a different day-to-day life, except for the addition of some writing time.