beholder

Our hero

stands in one of those odd suits – wide legs, long jacket, mile wide reveres – looking out at the lights of the city below and as the door opens, he turns to meet his fate and says “Hello, beautiful.”    Or he leaves her to a far far better man and touches his (inevitable for the period) hat  saying “’Bye, beautiful.”   Beautiful is not a word you hear much now and if Andrew Tate is inspiring young men, you can understand why. 

There are all sorts of  beauties – of youth or age or light, colour or concept or gesture – as well as what the dictionary calls “a combination of qualities that delights the aesthetic senses.”    But it is not often offered as a pleasantry.  Perhaps  beauty is too formal, too demanding, too (get ready for this) gender specific, though I think beauty just is.. 

Which takes us smartly back to what  you or I think of as beauty  – even the implication of it being in the eye of the beholder.   

The two best things  Lily (NHN) ever did for me  was to send me  a goldstone heart  and a Turkish proverb :”A heart in love with beauty never grows old.”  It’s not so much that I look for it as recognize it in my own terms when I see it – and hold myself free to comment.

A man came down the aisle of the bus, great jacket, crisp jeans, etc and oddly becoming spectacle frames.   As he sat down beside me, I said “I’m so glad you sat down there, now I can tell you how attractive those glasses are.”   He looked at me and thanked me.  “I always notice glasses” I explained.  “Worn them since I was eight.”  

He talked  quietly – you know how you think some people are shy ? It doesn’t stop them doing anything but it costs. And he made several references to changing his life and doing things before he was too old.    So I asked.  He looked at me and said very quietly “62”.   I thought he was in his late forties and said so.    (aside:  I have learned long ago – better an unexpected truth than an anticipated  evasion).  We talked (I think chat is a four letter word.)  I’d say his appearance was harmonious, what I call almost beautiful – no mean compliment.  My mother was almost beautiful.

Having  taken leave of him, I walked up to where  a number of people had gathered in a sort of pool for the next bus I wanted and waited.  At the back was  a man – middle height, middle age, ordinary clothes, glasses and I grinningly extended my left arm to the bus, saying to him as we drew level “Beauty before age”. I know, it’s a reversal of  “age before beauty” but he grinned and waved me forward.  

The journey was lit by sun, I saw a Swedish neighbour and two other women I know by sight, all of us uplifted by the clearing of the cloud and momentary ease. My back was to the glass partition, round which  the man from the  queue put his head before he got off.    “’Bye, beautiful” he said.   As I turned with delight, he waved from the pavement, he kissed his hand, I kissed mine.   Less a truth than an invocation – oh the power of words. 

I am horrified  by tweaks and fillers and Botox, just as wary as  at the constant bombardment of images and being like somebody else.  And young men

are currently more likely to footle around with all this stuff  than young women.  So the procedure isn’t about what it does but how it make you feel about yourself.   And at an estimated £200 a pop, it’s our old friend “Because I’m worth it” – an insecurity  exploited by the burgeoning men’s beauty  business.  So I read delightedly  of a Dutch university  where research indicated that if you want to be more attractive – smile.   And again, you can’t fake it.  Most of us recognize that upward swing of the lips while the eyes stay unmoved as not a smile at all.             

Such  courage and joy did those two men  give me, I hope it was mutual.  And thus,  I walked  much further, quietly, in and out of places I didn’t know, my heart  eased that in this sad old bad old world, there is still room for the beholder, and beauty.