Beauty

I suppose you’ll have to see to know.

Now, describe to me the physique of YOUR perfect lover, a body which you may desire and never tire of. Can you do it? That one being of your own faction of imagination which you could love. Perhaps we have grown out of this senselessness, or maybe we are just sensitive beings.

If the day comes that I meet the encapsulation of my perception of beauty, I would not even recognise it. And if I did, I would be horrified by it, not gratified. It would appear to me utterly grotesque instead of purely exquisite.

But why?

Because ideals are not meant to be touched and beheld by the worldly senses—they corrupt the glorious perfection that can only exist in the mind. In a transcendent realm that is not known to our inferior existence and that which we may never reach in our disgraced lives, there, is where it should belong. It would take no form and its abstractness, its formlessness would be the reason why it is beautiful. Beauty is horrific in this life as there can be no beauty, only vanity. That is why I fear that I should see the embodiment of my perception of beauty in this life.

I see instead the ugly as the beautiful and behold their spectacular deformations, admire them as they are. A hunched figure, skin clung onto protruding bones, mouth that should have been in the middle and eyes that should have been closer together—I am deeply captivated, my eyes should not avert, my attention is all yours.

Do you understand? There can be no beauty in this life.

Once, I think, through the windows, the light of the ochre evening filtered through and landed on your sleeping face. You were beautiful then and I wondered if I could be wrong.