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Date Posted: 23:34:32 04/21/08 Mon
Author: SS
Subject: ****************TUESDAYJOURNAL1*****************

Noah Eaton
April 20th, 2008
Writing 420

Elaborative, Unabridged Thoughts About Beauty


When leafing through the selected collections of readings for this term, trying to find a conduit, a rabbit hole I could squeeze through and then follow through in finding some deeper patterning and contexts to the rhetorical ruminations of what writing is, I was immediately struck by the title of an essay written by Ursula Le Guin that was originally published in 1992 in the “Reflections” section of Allure magazine and titled as “The Stranger Within”, until later going through an ongoing parade of revisions and being titled under its current incarnation as “Dogs, Cats and Dancers: Thoughts About Beauty”.
I found Le Guin’s opening commentary on the truth about cats and dogs all so comical, for my family owns a Bichon Frisse by the name of Millie (she was a Christmas present offered the year we entered the new millennium, thus explaining her name) who is rather intelligent and alert, yet also a bit of an unhealthy eater frankly, and whenever she wants to step outside to relieve herself, and then come back in after she has done so, I often find her just standing there within the screen door nonchalantly, and as she just lounges around innocently, I’m reminded of the quote: “If your dog is fat, you're not getting enough exercise.” :D
Le Guin goes on to suggest that dogs don’t know where they begin and end, whereas cats do know because when “they walk slowly out the door that you’re holding for them, and pause, leaving their tail just an inch or two inside the door, they know it………..that is why their tail is there. It is a cat’s way of maintaining a relationship.” (163). She finally goes onto conclude that, based on her anecdotal-infused experiences, we are more like dogs in that “we really don’t know what size we are, how we’re shaped, what we look like.” (164) and designating the ever clever Exhibit A to airplane seat designers, whereas those who do know what they look like are either cats or, more accurately, dancers, who “have no illusions or confusions about what space they occupy.” (165).
Aside from the obvious thought speaking out loud saying: “Miss Le Guin ought to consider performing stand-up comedy as a secondary hobby!”, LOL, I was most taken in by her notion that there’s something about her that “doesn’t change, hasn’t changed, through all the remarkable, exciting, alarming, and disappointing transformations my body has gone through. There is a person there who isn’t only what she looks like, and to find her and know her I have to look through, look in, look deep, not only in space, but in time……..I am not lost until I lose my memory.” (168) She concludes the best way to come to terms with beauty’s inner-most truths is by understanding that not “all the dancing we do is danced with the body” (170) and that, as writers, our souls also leap with them as they leap.
It clearly reminded me of this awkward experience I had in high school shortly before graduation, where I was part of the yearbook committee and we were asked to go around completing a survey about which of these three qualities our graduating class most valued: beauty, wisdom or charisma. The final results came out with wisdom being preferred by 52% of respondents, followed by charisma with 40%, and beauty lagging last with 8%.
I happened to be among that razor-thin minority who answered “beauty” as the quality most valued, and many appeared most perplexed by that, saying “Really? Someone like you thinks beauty matters more than wisdom?” I never thought of “beauty” at the time in its more superficial, cellophane form, but rather as having the ability to see opportunity in the world when all seems glum at the moment, to see hope when encumbered by fear, to see prisms in black and white, among other things………yet I couldn’t explain in words what my notion of “beauty” was, and thus was consequentially lumped in in public opinion with the likes of those who see “beauty” as glamour shots and Milk of Magnesia.
I think, had I serendipitously came across this article in April 2002, her words would explain my sentiments on beauty then better than anyone could and I could have effectively courted more “beauty” votes, LOL! Alas, it takes much patience and persistence to see that beauty has most to do with bones and what kind of person one is, or being able to see the “truer image” of a loved one with those turquoise bracelets on ones freckled arm, rather than merely in ones misshapen form when living with cancer.
In a way, I think we’re going about it the wrong way when inquiring whether we are more like dogs, cats or dancers. I think we share attributes of all three, and may even have atavistic genes, as far as I’m concerned. But if one wants to remain insistent that we are most like dogs, Southern writer Lewis Grizzard did say: “Life is like a dog sled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”
Seems to me that dogs know that kind of dancing too! ;)

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