Beauty

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard identifies three forms of life—the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious—available to us in our ongoing attempt to escape the universal human condition of despair.

The aesthetic life is lived when individuals relate to themselves. Such people focus their attention on personal considerations and seek out novel experiences of beauty and pleasure. The ethical life is lived when individuals define themselves in reference to other human beings. Such people live lives of duty, and seek above all else to serve others. Finally, the religious life is lived when individuals relate themselves to something which transcends their own self, other people, and even this world. Such people “rest” their identity in the absolute.

For Kierkegaard, the religious life is the superior life, the only way of being that really allows someone to overcome despair; one does so by taking the necessary “leap of faith” into believing in the existence of God.

Sure.  Whatever.

I mean, far be it for me to criticize such an eminent thinker, especially one generally considered the first Existentialist, thereby pretty much paving the way to the dominant cultural worldview that essentially characterizes the contemporary world.

Still, I think the old brooding Dane gives short shrift to the aesthetic life.  

After all, human beings have been gifted with such a remarkable array of senses, all of which allow us to perceive beauty in its endless multifarious forms; and if that’s not a religious experience, and one which enables us to overcome despair—even for a few moments on a snowy evening in the Pacific Northwest—then what else could be?

No matter where you looked, (or listened or smelled or tasted or touched) atop the tippy-top of the snowy mound, beauty abounded.  Even the Space Needle showed off.

Fun—itself a kind of spiritual awakening—was had by all and laughter slid all the way down the icy hill again and again.

Good God it was grand.

Holidaze

It surely was a Christmas miracle where the weather was concerned.  

The day stopped being a miserable day right at the same time the day stopped being miserable.  Coincidence?  Of course.  Or synchronicity.  Both.

But it was a Holidazed Davezaster when it came to almost everything else, including right from the start, an unintentional ditching by the very person who was going on about not being ditched, but oh, well, reuniting felt so good on the first of several unnecessarily upward routes that normally one eschews because who doesn’t prefer longer and flatter rather than shorter and steeper, right?  

And yet, in spite of that, we seemed to be taking the worst of both options much of the time although that probably did get us to where we were going with utmost efficiency, a phenomenon far different than most of the rest of nearly all of the evening. 

It’s pretty easy to get lost in Magnuson Park, especially when you’re following the taillights of people who don’t know where they’re going either; fortunately, at least one person understands how the future present works and besides, there’s a limited number of places you could be headed for, even if a park shelter isn’t one of them.

Meanwhile, I’m still puzzling over how it’s possible to be a rule-breaker when there are no rules; somehow, it seems to happen, paradoxical as that is, which is probably the point.

Prudence suggests embracing half the opportunity, waiting a few hours and seeing what happens.  But sometimes the prudent thing to do is be imprudent, better to go overboard than merely dipping your toes.

The moon certainly held nothing back; not another night all year long that was longer for it.  Every time I gazed up from start to finish, there it shone.

And above all, success: all the way home and into the drive with rubber side down.  Not really a miracle, but kinda miraculous when you let it be.

Happy holidaze.

Climb

Gravity reminds us that “Whatever goes up, must come down,” but it can take a little while for that to happen when you’re repurposing a concrete structure meant to hold automobiles into a marble raceway for bicycles.

It warms ye olde cockles of one’s heart to turn such strange artifacts of our fossil fueled car-centric economy into a recreational habitat for two-wheelers not once, not twice, not thrice, not four, but five separate times in a single night.  (Admittedly, four was but a mere one flight up, but still…)

Designers of parking meters probably never planned on their being used so often as poles for locking bikes to; it’s unlikely that paper clip manufacturers expected their products to serve as ear cleaners with such regularity; and who’d a thunk coffee cups would find their ultimate purpose to be for holding pencils and pens rather than a roasted bean beverage?

By the same token, the architects of parking garages probably never had in mind that their concrete structures would spark such joy among cyclists by functioning so well as a way to get the blood flowing and body warming by turning left like a NASCAR driver and corkscrewing upwards floor after floor.  

And it’s doubtful those structural engineers could have predicted what a perfect spot for drinking beer and laughing together that the top floors of their structures would become, especially on a surprisingly dry evening in the Pacific Northwest during the rainiest part of the year.

Sunday afternoon wayfaring sessions sometimes yield Thursday evening ideas; as I learned at the proverbial knee of a wise not-so-old Joeball, it’s good to have a couple of previously-scouted locations in one’s back pocket; you never know when they’ll come in handy on a night when nobody really is yelling loudly for some such path here or there.

And who doesn’t love an outdoor living room just minutes from home? 

See the fun defy gravity and keep rising but never fall down.

Smoke

Common lore tells us that “smoke follows beauty.”  

If that’s true, then all of us, standing and sitting around the beach fire on the fifth night of Hannukah, following the day the internet didn’t come to an end as predicted, are beautiful, since no matter where you went, the plumes would find you.

And who am I to doubt the aesthetic judgment of mostly unreacted air, carbon dioxide, and water, mixed with a variable amount of mold spores, volatile organic compounds, and aldehydes?  

I do know, for sure, that the natural setting itself was particularly lovely, with a charcoal and graphite sky overhead to the east and the longest of low tide beaches stretching forth towards the west.

In fact, you could walk out so far onto the windswept sand bar that the entire shoreline expanse of Shilshole Bay, from Magnolia to Ballard and beyond was visible to your left, while simultaneously viewing all of Elliot Bay to downtown and Alki on your right, as if you were some sort of demi-Moses parting the seas of Seattle.

Maybe that was Mother Nature’s Hannukah gift of mixing together a soup of Biblical tales; who knows?

One thing’s for certain: if there is a God, He (or She, or They, or It, and All of the Above), must be pretty used to smoke following His (or Her, or Their, or Its) terrestrial handiwork, because this pale blue dot of a planet is some looker.  

No matter where you set your eyes, as you rotated and revolved about vainly trying to avoid being the subject of that old Platters’ song, they were filled with visions of loveliness, all four of the traditional elements doing their part to satisfy and surpass even the heartiest of appetites for exquisite splendor.

And Air, fire, earth, and water were made even more gorgeous by the bittersweet truth that the only way out was up, that little portending ugliness which heightens the beauty by contrast.