Issue 3 - Beauty
We spent much of the weekend tidying the house for visitors, and it intersected with a lot of other parts of my week to make me think deeply about the things I find beautiful, and the common factors which they share. I've realized that (to my way of thinking, at least) there are three major categories of beauty, each of which I'll describe as briefly as I can.
1. The Beauty Of Effort
What's so satisfying about a carefully-crafted piece of furniture, an elegantly-kept garden; a medieval manuscript, or the lines of a classic car?
I believe that the real essence of these things, whichever of them speak to us personally, is the beauty of effort. It's the clear "artificiality" of them, where "artifice" is the pure skill and inspiration of a human mind (or, more often, minds).
Effortful beauty stakes a claim on the world -- it beats back the chaos which otherwise reigns; there are fewer natural examples of this kind of effort (the only example which comes readily to mind is the bowerbird's mating rituals -- picture below) than there are of communication, tool use, or any of the other things we might claim as "elevating us above nature".
A Bowerbird's Carefully-constructed Bower.
2. Natural Grandeur
This second category of beauty strongly contrasts with the first, embodying forces which far outpower any human attempt to control or change them. Any human effect on them is merely by chance. Mountains, great storms, crashing waves, and Giant Sequoia trees all inhabit this category.
They serve as reminders that, for all our effortful striving, forces larger than us operate constantly. Natural grandeur is, for me, incredibly grounding for this reason -- it emphasizes the fragility and transience of life, and emphasizes that we should be thankful for each moment and experience we have.
3. Imperfection
The first two forms of beauty come together here, in the faded grandeur of a favorite pair of sneakers, the paint-stains and coffee-rings on a well-used workbench; the burn-marks on a grill and the yellowing pages of an old cheap paperback.
It is a reminder that, however much we might work to keep the world in order, we are only ever fending off the inevitable; it is at once an exhortation to keep working on the flawless, and a reminder not to become too attached to flawlessness.
Existence contains endless cycles -- today's sparkling new is tomorrow's rust-patina'd antique. And that's ok.
This sense of beauty is very much at the heart of the Japanese wabi-sabi world-view.
Project Updates
In which I attempt to keep myself honest by talking about things I'm thinking of making, or have half-made. Or perhaps, have put successfully out into the world.
Not a great deal to report here this week, although I did get a good few hours in tinkering with Django REST Framework. The goal with that, over the next 2-3 months, is to put together a solid base from which I can experiment with a couple of possible ideas for apps which might be fun.
It's also nice to actually touch code again, since most of my professional work recently has been focused on directing other people on how to write code, which is a surprisingly crap way to pay the mortgage.
A Thing of Beauty
We're well into the ski season now, and I'm starting to feel the FOMO which comes from accidentally living in South Florida.
(Caifornians, I will hopefully be in South Lake Tahoe the weekend of March 14th, though!)
So, this week's Thing of Beauty is an easy pick -- and it handily combines the Beauty of Effort with Natural Grandeur. Here, a view (of, I think, the Little Dipper run) from Heavenly Mountain Resort in Tahoe...
Ephemera
I have a bookmarks folder I've started dropping things in for this section of the Chronicle, and it's surprisingly delightful digging through it on a Sunday afternoon and trying to remember why I noted each random thing.
Drawing with Prime Numbers - Literally, prime numbers which make up images (world maps, the Mona Lisa) when written out in the right format. A form of Effortful Beauty with a side of "why?!", its perhaps unsurprising that it comes from a French Oulipo mailing list, which is a strong flashback to my interests and obsessions circa 2002 or so.
This is incredible parenting advice, whether you're dealing with an actual 10-year-old, or your own grumpy inner toddler.
Everything about Japan's Koreisha mark is wonderful, from the sheer practical-mindedness of it, to the fact that it had to be redesigned because the original was too depressing. (The newsletter that piece is from, Now I Know, is also well worth 10 minutes of your day).
If you haven't played SimCity BuildIt, the "official" mobile SimCity, for the love of all that is holy, don't. They ruined it with a resource-gathering focus where you either pay EA a steady trickle of real dollars, or spend days waiting for sheep to be born (or deckchairs to be made, or whatever). Pocket City, on the other hand, is a beautiful take on SimCity circa 2000-or-so, with not a microtransaction or artificial delay in sight.
And if you just want to spend 3 minutes throwing some roads and buildings on the ground without having to worry about the distribution of your emergency services and water pumps, the Iso City web toy is just the ticket.
Endnote
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