Beauty, wonder, delight

Keeping it alive...

I recently attended an online conversation hosted by

Dougald Hine

with

Caroline Ross

, titled, ‘Taking Beauty Seriously’, part one of a new series¹.

As I listened to the conversation, hearing phrases and ideas I recognise in my core as being true, my mind skittered off in all kinds of directions. For example:

1. ‘Beauty must be unnecessary’ (in the strictly utilitarian sense), and I think of my husband’s grandfather, a blacksmith, and the gates he and many others like him forged for their neighbours, farmers and smallholders in rural Ireland. Such gates were made to be useful, as a means to keep animals in fields, to mark boundaries and so on. These were not garden gates. Yet, if you get the chance to take a look at any of these old forged field and farm gates, you will find that most of them have some ornamentation, a carved sun on the upright bars; or a distinctive flourish that identified the work as coming from a particular craftsman or forge. Beautiful, but unnecessary for the everyday function of the gate, which might hang for much of its life down a grass-centred boreen leading to an unremarkable field. It might help contain cows lively on the first grass of spring, and with space between its bars through which a sleek black and white collie dog might silk through, seen only by its master, the farmer.

Cow and calf in a field in Co. Roscommon

2. Caroline spoke of making new wine from old dregs and I thought of the kefir grains that I received as a gift from my friend Monica several years ago and which still live, still continue the magical work of fermentation to transform milk into tangy rich kefir on my kitchen counter. And each day when I rinse the grains I leave some sticky residue to kickstart the new batch. I pass on surplus grains to anyone interested, keeping it circulating through the gift economy… the abundant generosity of kefir, keeping it alive. On and on it goes.

Kefir grains, sticky with residue

3. On a recent Saturday night I had been home watching the Tommy Tiernan show on TV and saw Edwina Guckian describe ‘sean nós’ dancing'; the improvisational nature of it, the necessity of each dancer paying attention to the other and responding, the dance coming into form as each responded to the other’s rhythm. If that is not beauty I don’t know what is; exuberant, lively and physical, the kind of ‘reckless beauty’ that Caroline Ross referenced. I found it very interesting when Edwina said that what we now refer to as ‘sean nós’ dancing (old style, different in style to the more formal ‘Irish dancing’) was just known as ‘dancing’ to earlier generations. It was something they did, with no need for it to be named or categorised. ‘Go out and knock some sparks out of the floor!’ her mother would say. And they did.

Edwina Guckian on collaboration and improvisation in dance

What I’m left with from all this skittering around is an awareness that beauty delights me, that in my everyday it very often comes to me as a surprise²: like the unexpected small flock of hens (with a colourful cockerel) pecking in the rough grass at the roadside verge at Kelly’s Lodge, as I drove past a few days ago; like the diamanté decoration on plain black boots that only came into view when the woman wearing them stepped from behind her desk, dressed otherwise in a conventional dark business outfit; but her ankles sparkled. Unnecessary? No, instead I would say vital.

For more on beauty take a browse through these links to some of my previous posts.³

You can also write your own personal book on beauty…⁴

1. The first of a new series of conversations, Sunday Sessions, hosted by Dougald Hine.

2. See my post on Elaine Scarry’s book, ‘On Beauty and Being Just’.

3. On fractals, chaos and harmony

‘Continuity as the heart and soul of cooking.’

‘Walking on the Pastures of Wonder’

4. You can buy (and use), Weather Report: A 90-day journal for reflection and well-being, with the aid of the Beaufort Wind Scale. It’s a day to a page and at the end of each day’s entry you are invited to write or draw one thing you found beautiful in your day. I promise you that it’s a rewarding and transformative practice, day by day. Yes, writing changes lives.

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