3:00, And Ruminations On Beauty.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

I slept today until 3:00.

"Oh my god, it's three o'clock!" I said, and snuggled deeper into the blanket. He was sleeping next to me. I don't know why we were so tired.

I woke up before then because the doggy was doing the pee-pee dance, and then I got back in bed to write about green food, and then I fell asleep again. We went to bed last night at around 10:00.

I slept some kind of deep, weird sleep, like my soul was being filled with sleep. I guess I am very tired...but it felt less like it had to do with my body and more like it had to do with my mind. Last week was crazy, emotional, and, apparently, exhausting.

Today, he sat on the couch and felt sorry for himself. He keeps looking in the mirror and saying that he looks like a monster. I think he looks like Christmas morning. I keep telling him he's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

What I think of his appearance or the state of his heart or his potential to make the world a better place doesn't count. "You love me," he tells me, and discounts anything I have to say.

And it's true, I love him. I love the whole big mess of him, every crook and crevice...but that love isn't completely unfounded.

A few nights ago, he was lying with his head in my lap, lamenting how he has fallen apart and how he is afraid that he's going to take me down with him, how he's good for nothing, how he contributes nothing to our home, to our relationship, to the world. I thought about everything he was saying, and I thought in that new, slow way I'm learning to think in recovery. I keep thinking about the way he feels.

There is some truth to it, that the last few months he hasn't been able to contribute much to our household, and that I've been bearing the brunt of a lot of his mess. But it's not true at all in the essential way he keeps asserting. He is a wonderful, wonderful man, and he makes me feel like the luckiest woman in the world sometimes.

And I've been thinking about what it is that he contributes to the world, outside of our relationship and our household. There are a few things, but the best thing is that he has this amazing ability to make things beautiful. He has a gift of a particular vision, and whenever he sets his mind to it, he can really turn shit to sugar.

And ultimately, I like the way this reflects on me, I think. This attribute of his is important to me, and it's something we share. I sometimes feel guilty that I'm not doing more to make the world a better place. Writing about body art is interesting, but it's not exactly curing A.I.D.S. But then I realize that writing is important, and it's my own way of making the world more beautiful.

So why is beauty so important? And why is beauty so important to me?

Beauty, I guess, gives me that god-feeling...that moment when you recognize something beautiful, when it kind of catches your breath and pulls at your guts, or points at some emptiness in your guts that feels so essential to living...it makes me feel aware of something bigger than myself.

That isn't properly Christian, is it? Or even Buddhist, which is second in line for my religion of choice. It's pagan...beauty induces a kind of spiritual awareness in me. Dionysian.

I'm going to go get in the bed, brush the hair off of my husband's forehead, and gaze at his lovely face.