Beauty and its ugliness

Nicole Salazar
CRWT 130
Final

Beauty and its Ugliness

Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it’s sent away.
– Sarah Kay
I would tell her that there’s nothing more beautiful than the how the wind knows where to blow away beads of sweat along your neck and face. How the coolness of the breeze is like a delicate touch caressing particular parts of the body. The Beach is crowded today. There’s more people than usual. Between the pier and the the furthest distance I can see along the shore, there is a long strip of bodies, towels and beach umbrellas. It reminded me of an enlarged version of an army of soldier ants marching in line to get back to their anthill, only these bodies weren’t moving. I saw all sorts of lazy. Lazy on top of beach chairs with both hands and feet spread out wide, lazy planted face first on a towel, lazy with no tops, lazy that should be wearing tops, lazy with hairy chests, hairless lazies, small lazies, big lazies, and sandy lazies. The sky is the color of emptiness and innocence with no sign of any flaw or taint. If someone were to ask me “How do you describe the beauty of perfection?” I would have simply answered, “Just look up.” I stare ahead. A very thin line draws itself right in the middle of the sky and the ocean. Or rather, the ocean was once the sky, but something had turned the bottom half of the sky a darker shade of greenish, blueish, brown. It’s like a painter had blended those very colors below this very thin boarder of separation. It also sparkles. The ocean. Glitter is spread across the vastness of the plane. Then there’s the sand. Each grain finds its way into every tiny enclosed crevice, into every crack of every thread on the bottom of a pant leg, into every indented wrinkle in the skin, or caught into a small patch of tangled leg hairs.

To me, the things I find most beautiful are the things I find most mysterious.
–   Anonymous

There is something about not knowing everything. The lack of knowledge allows more curiosity to creep in. It’s like the uncertainty creates a soft bed for knowledge to rest in. Curiosity definitely moves me. It keeps me interested. There’s a sort of beauty in mystery and sort of ugliness in knowing too much at one time. I feel that human beings are naturally curious and it intrigues them when they have the opportunity to wonder. So, to the girl who wears her heart on her sleeve: I want to talk about your heart. Did you know that everyday the heart pumps 2,000 gallons of blood per day and through 60,000 mile of veins and arteries, well according to Google. It is one of the main organs the human body needs to live, I would assume. Aside from the wikipedia definitions, our heart is our engine, our life source. It’s also the generator of our passion. Our desire. Our heart yearns. It gets lonely. And it breaks. It’s glass on the edge of the counter. It determines the amount of generosity we hold, the type of workers we are and the morals and values we possess deepest passions. It’s the vault to our most sacred secrets. I guess that’s why you need a key. But the key isn’t needed if it’s on your sleeve. Why put the most vulnerable part of you exposed to hurt, pain and deception. Sometimes the world isn’t ready to see all of you at once. Even if they are, you leave it bored because they have seen everything. What happened to mystery? There’s a sort of beauty in mystery and sort of ugliness in knowing too much at one time. Human beings are naturally curious and it intrigues them when they have the opportunity to wonder.  “A flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all” – Mulan

Be in love with your life and every detail of it.
– Anonymous

I didn’t plan on falling in love with you. And I doubt if you planned on falling in love with me. But once we met, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us.
– Notebook

My heart skipped a beat and then flat out tripped over itself and fell on its face.
 – Eat Pray Love
“She hated the sound goodbye makes” It sounded like the end of forever, like emptiness after something festive. it sounded like the fear of the possibility of not replacing it with something as great. Goodbye is the end of the chapter, the conclusion of a life and it may seem temporary but at the present moment, it is the termination of permanence. His minty euclyptus scent that had once soaked into the fabric of his favorite grey hoodie had disintegrated into forever lost molecules in the air. It had finally disappeared after the many months it had just sat scrunched in a ball in the corner of her closet, where it had probably absorbed her own signature aroma. As she picked it up and squeezed it under her nose, she no longer sensed him. Instead she smelt herself or rather nothing, not even the softener she uses for her own laundry. For that is why the farewells were released in the first place, it has due to her own significant well being and individualistic prioritization. Herself was what she helped most dearly at the time.
And as she slipped her arms through the loose sleeves that used to guard from the piercing stickinesss of the chill, it hung droopingly as if wanting to slip off her shoulders. The inside of the jacket was cold and blanked her in a chilling cold.
She tried hugging it tighter around her body, but the cold metal of the zipper pierced her bare chest. She saw the years of wear and tear within the slight rips on the cuffs of the sleeves where her hand fit through. Very closely, she could see the dirt that sneakily made its way within the small crevices of the thread and fabric. The hood that once drew above her head like a powerful wizards cloak now wouldn’t stay on top of her head as she moved her face side to side. The hoodie no longer provided the warmth it used to. It hung loosely on her body as if wanting to slide off. As if wanting to slide off and say goodbye.

2013

I wanted to write something completely different. Reading several essays from John D’Agata’s collection of nonfictional narratives inspired me to write abstractly and beautifully. I thought it beautiful when essays didn’t have a clear purpose. In the words of my first nonfiction professor (more or less) , I want to “transform something unknown to something beautiful.” If you read this and struggle to grasp the point, I may argue that I probably don’t have one or I, myself, am struggling to find a point in anything, actually. So with some quotes and references to other poets and writers, here it is. I present to you a piece of my mind. A part of me that tries to tell a true story in a very interesting way.