Blindsided by Beauty. . .and What Followed

Sometimes, I am blindsided by beauty.  Although, being “blindsided” usually has a negative connotation, I don’t mean it that way.  I just needed a word stronger than “surprised” to describe the “surprise” I sometimes feel when I bump into someone or something beautiful. This morning I walked out of Panera and got blindsided when I looked at the sky.  It wasn’t the bright blue kind of sky extending from horizon to horizon, but rather a dappled blue sky, spotted by white and grey pebbles of cloud strewn in every direction.  For a second it took my breath away.  

Later, when I thought about it, I remembered a poem, “The Windhover” by Victorian monk and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, introduced to me by Harry Staley, my favorite literature professor at UAlbany.  Professor Staley was always a blur of chalk dust and insight.  He lectured at a whirlwind rate, and when he stopped for a breath, would lean against the blackboard so that when he turned around you could read some of the lecture notes in reverse on the back of his tweed sport coat.  What follows is a few lines from “The Windhover,” a poem in which Hopkins describes his reaction to the moment a high flying bird dives, the support of the wind seemingly no longer beneath it:

“My heart in hiding

Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and

valour and act,

oh, air, pride, plume,

here

Buckle! AND the 

fire that breaks from thee then, a billion

Times told lovelier, more

dangerous. . .”

Let me first say this poem contains one of the worst bits of internal rhyme ever created by a master.  “My heart in hiding stirred for a bird.”  Not good, Gerard. . .but the rest is really good.  Professor Staley flew across the front of the room talking about the “essence” and the “thissence” of a moment when the air buckled under the windhover.  For me, it’s a poem about being blindsided by beauty.

Using my dappled sky moment as a point to work back from, I thought of the other moments of beauty I had experienced this morning.  Sitting across a table from and eating a whole grain bagel with the love of my life was beautiful, although I didn’t think about it at the time.  Nor did I think about the beauty of the shining smile on the face of a student from the past, who I had failed to recognize when I walked by her because she had an interesting hat atop her head.  A little boy and a little girl dancing out the door with their mom and grandma in tow were beautiful.  The handsome young couple working at their computer and laughing now and again by the front window, delighted with each other, was beautiful, too.  As I reflected, I asked myself, “Greg, how can you ever be down or depressed when, if you are alert, you so often can be blindsided by beauty?”

That’s a question that is easy to answer.  Darn right, I’ll be down and depressed again.  I’ll think about the mess in Syria, for example.  I’ll not want to risk one American life in any attempt to help a group of people thousands of miles away, many of whom despise Americans.  That's the best way, all right, and I’m not even sure whether it’s liberal or conservative.  Then I’ll recall the final four lines of the poem “No Man Is An Island” written by cleric John Donne, the greatest of the metaphysical poets:

“Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.” 

I quoted from “No Man Is An Island” in another blog a couple years ago.  It’s a poem that just won’t go away.  Too many times over the centuries, when human beings called out for help, other human beings turned their backs, shut their ears.  They chose not to hear the bell tolling.  So. . .is there a bell tolling now that America must heed?

That is a question that will be very hard to answer.  In fact, I won’t be able to.  I’m not smart enough.  And that is depressing!

So, I better pose myself another question.  How did a post about being blindsided by beauty become a post about whether or not to do more war?  I can’t answer that, either.   My thoughts just led me this way.  From a beautiful sky, to a poem dedicated to Christ written by a priest 150 years ago, then to a poem that might be about responsibility by an Anglican cleric from 400 years past.  

To close, I will try one more poet, the Romantic John Keats, who, around 200 years ago wrote an ode about a vase he saw in a museum.  He called this poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”  As odes are, it was dedicated or addressed to people or things.  In this case, he spoke of the painted characters on an ancient vase, captured for an eternity at one particular moment of their lives.  It was a poem about art and life, and it ended with the famous words,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all

Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”

My problem is that I never have been exactly sure what that means.  “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” five words that are "all" I "know on earth” and, according to Keats, “all" I "need to know.” (I sigh!) I guess I will simply opt for beauty, let it continue to occasionally blindside me, and hope that most often, it leads me to the truth. . .which it is, after all, so says Keats.