Easy Beauty

by Chloé Cooper Jones

I did not see another choice because I was not yet aware I was making one.

Difficult beauty, Bosanquet says, “simply gives you too much, at one moment, of what you are perfectly prepared to enjoy if only you could take it all in.” The ability to perceive and appreciate truly complex beauty requires a willingness to process it slowly, bit by bit. We must not demand it make itself apparent all at once. I think of Wolfgang and all I’d felt when he was born, that day too complex to be apparently happy, too intricate to process all at once. I feel the shape of Wolfgang’s body pressing against my chest. I feel the exact weight of him in my arms. I remember the night I stood in his doorway while he and Andrew played on the floor with blocks. I remember the chasm between us, them in their present, me in my past. It is possible to change. I just don’t know how. But I am not unable. I watch the stage and see what presence looks like, what it feels like, what effect it has on others. For that night, no part of me is split, all of me was there, with all these screaming people, all caught up in the wave of her making, which begins to dissolve a corner of my conventional world, and the model for a new future shimmers in the distance. I try to take it in, bit by bit.

I do feel something like religious ecstasy, but not because I long to understand God, but because I long to better know what it means to be human.

I do not feel confident, I do not feel calm, but I do feel able.