Beautiful People by Melanie Safka

Beautiful people
You live in the same world as I do
But somehow I never noticed you before today
I'm ashamed to say

Beautiful people
We share the same back door and it isn't right
We never met before but then
We may never meet again

If I weren't afraid you'd laugh at me
I would run and take all your hands and

I'd gather everyone together for a day
And when we gather'd
I'll pass buttons out that say: Beautiful People

Then you'd never be alone
'Cause there'll always be someone
With the same button on as you
Include him in everything you do.

Beautiful people
You ride the same subway as I do ev'ry morning
That's got to tell you something

We got so much in common
I go the same direction that you do
So if you take care of me
Maybe I'll take care of you

Beautiful people
You look like friends of mine
And it's about time
That someone said it here and now
I make a vow that some time, somehow
I'll have a meeting
Invite ev'ryone you know
I'll pass out buttons for
The ones who come to show

Beautiful people
You never have to be alone
'Cause there'll always be someone
With the same button on as you
Include him in ev'rything you do

He may be sitting right next to you
He may be beautiful people too

And if you take care of him
Well maybe he'll take care of you


'Cause all of the beautiful people do
And I'm a beautiful people too....

Beautiful People, words and music copyright Melanie Safka

Brave enough to accompany the beautiful

J. Ruth Gendler's astute and loving observations of our human condition are packed tight into The Book of Qualities. She brings forth a world where Beauty, Blame, Sensuality, Complacency, Guilt, Power and many, many others are neighbors, relatives, friends and enemies. Each of the 74 qualities she describes has its own personality traits--some of which you may expect, many you may not, yet few you will dispute. She is a wise woman with a weird and essential vision of who and how we are.

Beauty is startling. She wears a gold shawl in the summer and sells seven kinds of honey at the flea market. She is young and old at once, my daughter and my grandmother. In school she excelled in mathematics and poetry. Beauty doesn't anger easily, but she was annoyed with the journalist who kept asking her about her favorites--as if she could have one favorite color or one favorite flower. She does not usually mind questions though, and she is especially fond of riddles. Beauty will dance with anyone who is brave enough to ask her.*

The play of "young and old at once," "mathematics and poetry" and irriation over chosing favorities sent a flash of recognition through me. Still, I wasn't convinced of Gendler's vision here until "Beauty will dance with anyone who is brave enough to ask her." This is true, and I know it from both sides: the stunned and the stunning.

So often, we feel we won't measure up to our visions of greatness, of beauty, of integrity. When we shy away from them, safe, small, lame and ashamed we leave the greatness unattended and lonely.

Consider this in the most literal sense: there are babes aplenty too hot to talk to and few among us who can get beyond that and engage them. Everyone needs love and attention. Even the very, very, very attractive. People're always asking how Regular Joes end up with the knockouts they do. It may be money, it may be power, but those attributes are hollow without confidence and courage at their source.

Consider too, that sometimes it isn't just that we are now too little and lame, but that we don't even believe we should build ourselves into the greatness we can imagine.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. **

Liberate yourself. Liberate the others. Talk to all the 10s you can. Get right up close to the Sun, Apollo. Your blaze of glory is waiting.



*J. Ruth GendlerThe Book of Qualities. Turquoise Mountain Publications, 1984 (pg. 27). Thanks Mark!
**Marianne Williamson. A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles. Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3 (Pg. 190-191).

Wild Animals Don't Get Fat

And that's beautiful. It's in the elegance of necessity--form following function. Lack of excess is so gorgeous. Where is beauty for you? I feel it in the unchecked openness of small children; in the dizzy bliss of sleep deprivation or the first few drinks where the self I often edit and supress flows so easily; drinking water and not soda; raw and steamed vegetables not roasts and sautees. Keep me close to the world as it cannot help but be, and my soul will shout YESYESYES reawakened to the ecstasy of this existence.

When I am envying eagles and bears, confused and depressed by the excesses of civilization, beauty feels so far away. Still civilization (like cyanide) is also natural and therefore necessary and faultless. What am I seeking? More good feelings and a deeper connection. I feel the universe so much more when I am closer to its simpler state.

Let me bike and use my body--wilderness commute! Drop me unsuspecting into the deafening quiet of a forest--my mind changes. I smile and sing. Show me the rainbow galaxies above me--my big life also so so small. Remind me where and what I come from, and I will remember I am so glad to be alive.

YES

I was 15 when I first felt it - a big deep silent YES. That spring and summer, I spent hours at the ninth floor window looking out over the bay toward Manhattan watching the sky change. Had I ever been that quiet and comfortable before? It was so different. It was the sweet accidental beginning of my search for beauty.

That same summer I drew up plans for documenting beauty and surrounding myself with the quest but never followed through in the way I thought I would. Instead, I've had this project tucked away for years. It's funny too. At times I've actively pursued it, and at other times, while otherwise involved, beauty's come to me.

There's something so special there: when without searching I've found myself again aware of the big YES YES YES. I feel a fondness and comfort and deep joy at those times often followed by the impulse to hold on tighter maybe, or at least to pay attention and look out for those moments. Then after awhile, the feeling fades and the cycle starts again.

This though, is the next step. The active pursuit, the fruition of that original vision. My plans and goals for the project have aged as I have and happily so. Also, this work - this search for beauty - investigation of its nature and source, implication and power - means more to me now as other dreams once dreamt have fallen away while this one has stayed with me.