Beauty and truth

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' (1)

This is the ending of an ode written by one of the bards of the land. It is a simple statement, yet so all-encompassing. Can truth be so easily defined?

Another of the great bards wrote:

All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon.
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
What is less or more than a touch?
Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
Only what nobody denies is so. (2)

Could this be closer to the "truth", as it were? I cannot say. Such mysteries are beyond my ability to decipher.

I ruminated on these thoughts as I spent the day in the Eave-mere rather than returning to Tinnudir as I should have. In that regard, the "Beauty is truth" argument won out, for I could not take myself away from such beauty.

I know that sometime, perhaps sometime soon, I will be asked to venture into places of darkness, places where no beauty exists to hold up to myself. I can only hope that, by the experience of such beauty now, I will be able to turn my gaze inward, when no outward beauty is to be found. Are we able to make our own truth, our own beauty? I can only but try.


I had a vision as I danced in the water. I heard someone call my name. I knew the voice. I turned around and smiled as I saw my friends, both of recent times, and of times long ago, all as one being. We took each others' hands and pranced in the water until darkness threatened. It gave me such joy, even as I wished that someone had truly been there with me, someone I could have shared the experience with.


To catch a last glimpse of the sun, I scaled the hill from which the water fell and edged ever so closely to its rocky edge. After peering over the crest of the waterfall into the glorious sunlight, I knelt upon the rock and looked down into the pool below, where the deafening roar of water buffeting into rock bellowed its living cry. I closed my eyes, willing myself to remember that day and all the days of beauty that had come before. May I never forget...



"To become one with such beauty, even if only very briefly, would be a truth that I would have forever," I thought to myself. Taking a deep breath, I leapt off the rock and into the water below. The water was more shallow than I had thought, and I turned my ankle pretty good. It will be fine tomorrow, though it be an inconvenient truth for now.

With Light,
Kaleigh

- (1) from Ode to a Grecian Urn, John Keats
- (2) from Song of Myself, Walt Whitman

[This journal entry is written in memory of all my dear friends who have left us for far-distant shores. You all walk with me still, and I will never forget :)]