LIFE AS MYTH
JOURNAL
JOURNAL 2024
Of wonder
AUTUMN 2024
Finding joy
LIFEWORKS
ATLAS
AUTUMN 2024
GLIMPSING BEAUTY
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
John Keats, English poet
Many years ago, my sons and I lived in a little cottage in the woods. One summer evening, around sunset, we were all on the front porch together. Our dog was lying at one end of the porch, panting heavily from the heat. The overhead porch fan, slightly off-balance in its cradle, clicked back and forth, blades whirring. The boys were blowing soap bubbles to pass the time, each competing with the other to create the largest one. The front porch filled with bubbles, floating, catching in the updraft of the fan, before bursting, pattering across porch planks.
Then my younger son blew a goliath of a bubble that began dancing toward me. That’s when it happened. It felt like Time slowed or maybe I simply paid very close attention but I saw such beauty. It wasn’t just the bubble cha-cha-ing toward me. It had to do with my children and how much we loved each other but it also had to do with the sunset, the clicking of the fan, the dog’s deep breaths. All of it was integral to what this was. That crazy bubble began trembling and shivering and the light from the sunset skated all over it. I knew it was going to explode and then it did and that was deeply beautiful too.
That was eternal beauty. Yes, the particular experience is over. Bubbles popped, children grew up, and the same sun has gone down and come back up many, many times. It doesn't matter. What remains is that glimpse of Beauty, absolute and whole, and that is all I can know on earth, and all I need to know.
Collected writings, Usher. (2002 - ).
The time polyptych: Past continuous, panel 1, (2021- ).Watercolor, charcoal and ink on paper. 24 x 30 in / 61 x 79 cm.
I appreciate the power of great writers to harness poetic metaphors to capture what is beyond words. These lines of verse from Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn do just that. They describe the intimate relationship between beauty and truth. Beauty and truth, artists teach us, are the foundational underpinnings of creativity and art. According to Keats, truth and beauty are the foundation of life itself.
Life As Myth, collected writings: "Truth and Beauty", Usher (2007).
