In the eye of the beholder

On my long (long, long) walk to Ciara's yesterday, I experienced something I do not see very often: natural beauty.

There's a difference, in my mind, between natural beauty and what I might call "human beauty", which is to say, art and indeed any human creation. The disparity, I think, lies in meaning. Art -- human creations -- inherently possess some meaning; even if we don't know what it is, even if the artist doesn't know what it is, even if it isn't possible to convey in any form of communication we possess, there is a meaning. All human creation is in pursuit of some purpose -- often, we just aren't aware of it.

But the need for meaning is a feature found solely in human beings. The natural world does not desire meaning; it exists simply because it exists. Its form has been decided by evolution and no small degree of random chance; and as such, inherently meaningless, its beauty is, I believe, of an entirely different character from the beauty of art.

One property common to both of these, however, is that they cannot be controlled; though art possesses meaning guided by its creator, it is independent of its creator; true art stands alone, in my opinion. This is what struck me first (though I describe it last in this post) as I walked the long (long, long) walk to Ciara's. I was surrounded by all the simulacra and artifice of the modern world, attempts to bind and leash both art and nature into compartmentalized, mass-produced units of manufactured culture, and yet, despite this, in small cracks across the surface, the truth shown through. Beauty was still visible.

To me, this demonstrated the power of beauty (which I use, I suppose I should mention, as simply another word for truth, which is itself a word that means different things to different people and thus I should probably define but won't here because it would take far too long): how much effort and endeavor went into trying to erase all beauty, to control completely this urban landscape, only to collapse in failure? Nature, and art, and beauty, and truth are forces more powerful than any rational construction of the logical mind. If I were to have any, they would be my gods.

ETA: Liz's house is also extremely demonstrative of this principle. It's a beautiful relic of bygone eras.