BeautyDialogues

Welcome to the Beauty Dialogues!

This is a space to celebrate beauty - not just the beauty of form, but also those patterns of essential wholeness that go beyond the visible.

Wholeness dissolves the illusion that life and work are separate. So, while this is a "professional" blog in that I design online communications for a living and often write about design, communications & technology, it's also about everything else I see (in the world and in myself) when looking through a beauty-lens.

American Beauty Dialogue

I was watching American Beauty last night and found myself once again mesmerized by that perfect scene where the young videographer-next-door shows his new love the "most beautiful thing" he's ever seen... footage of a plastic bag whirling in the wind, dancing with a pile of leaves.

Apparently it was this very image, which he experienced in real life, that inspired Alan Ball to write the screenplay, and Ball's words, Rick telling Janey about shooting the scene, carry the sensation:

"It was one of those days, when it's a minute away from snowing. And there was this electricity in the air. You could almost hear it. And this bag was just ... dancing ... with me. Like a little kid, begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That was the day when I realized that there was this ... entire life ... behind things. And this incredibly benevolent force who wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid. Ever.

Sometimes there is so much ... beauty ... in the world. It's like I can't take it. And my heart is just going to cave in."

The sensibility that went on to provide us with five seasons of Six Feet Under (probably one of the most profound treatises on death American popular culture has ever produced) ends his debut film script with an echo of this moment in a voice-over from Janey's dead father Lester, who's just been shot:

"I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me. But it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me, like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude."

I'm struck by the experience Ball describes twice in his film - of expanding with emotion, almost to the point of collapse - juxtaposed with this ephemeral image, which is repeated in the dying father's visual sequence as well.

It's like he's trying to make visible, audible, the sheer, unpredictable, and almost-impossible-to-bear beauty at the very heart of life.

Promoting Yourself

I seem to be on a real video kick lately. :-) Here's one that came though this morning from Berrett Koehler Publishers. They have a fantastic editor for their newsletter, Jeevan Sivasubramaniam, who always cracks me up. This video is a great example of his sense of humor used to illustrate a valuable lesson.

The video's about authors and promoting books, but the points are equally valid for anyone making a public offering in learning how (and how not) to promote yourselves:

Annie

What stays with me from Annie Leibovitz' photographic exhibit (and the book it illustrates: A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005) is her decision to integrate her personal and professional photography into a seamless whole. As she says, "it is one life, not two".

Perhaps being married to Susan Sontag and having close personal ties with many famous people has helped blur her line between intimate and public, but I think it is more to do with the level of her gaze, that seems to see pretty much everything with the same measure. There were many stunning portraits among her collection, but the ones that stood out for me were the ones where it seemed her subjects met this gaze head-on. Here are Annie's photographs of Mark Morris, Eudora Welty and Sarah Cameron Leibovitz, to show you what I mean:

Desert Beauty

The desert is a delicate animal at this time of year. Like a snake shedding its skin it’s fragile, vulnerable, in a state of emergence.

If I were making a list of the 100 things I want to do before I die, visiting the desert in bloom would certainly be among them. 

So when my friend Bridget mentioned that she goes to Anza Borrego every year around this time and suggested I might want to come with her and photograph the beauty, I jumped at the chance (Bridget is an exceptionally talented green architect and landscape designer and also a client of mine – look for an announcement of her site and blog at bridgetbrewer.com soon)!

Second Life and the Imaginal Realm

David Sibbet's intriguing Second Life Retrospective catalyzed a response that I posted as a comment on his blog, but the ideas were so engaging to me that I thought I'd write a bit here as well.

One part of David's retrospective that particularly interested me was his exploration of how what I understand as the Jungian idea of active imagination might effect psychological healing and spiritual development within Second Life ...

I've heard that experiencing something in one's imagination is neurologically almost identical to having experienced it in reality. If this is true, it has huge implications for consciously using Second Life to work with all sorts of issues - emotional, psychological, spiritual, social, philosophical and environmental. Second Life could be (and already is) a playground to test and seed all kinds of positive change.*

Lastly, another area I found fascinating was David's recounting of his experiences with Light in Second Life. You have to read his paper to get the fullness of his thinking on this subject, but I wanted to give you all some idea. So this is my SL avatar, Pipi Tinlegs, standing near the rays of the healing light table in David's inworld Story Studio:

* (speaking of seeding positive change, I recently hosted a World Café in Second Life for the Rockridge Institute with the fabulous SingingHeart Amat, aka in 'real' life as Michelle Paradis. I'll write up a proper report on it soon and link to it from this blog)

Be the Change

I get occasional mail from KarmaTube sharing inspirational videos, and this one was so good I wanted to share it with you here on the Beauty Dialogues. It's 2 minutes of pure 'Yes We Can", set in a traffic jam in India.

Be the Change! Do that seemingly small thing, and see what happens...

Kite Runner

I saw a remarkable film the other day: The Kite Runner (I have the book, but had not yet read it). Watching this film was one of those experiences that moved me in ways and for reasons that I almost can't discern or describe. Parts of it were extremely painful to watch, and yet it felt like a necessary pain, the kind of unavoidable pain that is part of being human.

Co-Creation

The always delightful Barbara Marx Hubbard has an intriguing theory about why we sometimes "click" with each other in such profoundly generative ways ...

I've often experienced the thrill of creative communion she talks about, and I love the provocative twinkle in her eyes when she names it as she sees it. Of course we'd all be feeling pretty good too, if we'd stimulated as much vocational arousal in the world as she has. :-) What a Beauty!

John O'Donohue

I've just heard that John O'Donohue, the great Irish poet/philosopher that I have quoted here so often from his fabulous book on Beauty, The Invisible Embrace, died unexpectedly on January 3rd.

His friend David Whyte has written a beautiful memorial, including a poem he wrote for John.

My sorrow at this loss is beyond words.