Beauty

I am a woman. What don't I know about beauty? I have breathed in its instruction since I was a little girl, twirling in my mother's favorite dancing dress, hearing, "Oh, so sweet." I have absorbed the guidelines for beauty from my culture to include painting black around my eyes, and red on my cheeks and lips, but not the reverse. My ears are full of the praises and ridicules of those who abide by our group guidelines, and the faults of the unfortunates who weren't born with some measure of beauty. As if that were possible.

Martin Luther talked about the alien dignity of people, the automatic value a person holds simply by existing. We seem to understand the intrinsic value of someone who has had a tragic accident and loses mobility. But a person with a quirky or awkward gait, we allow no mercy. Our culture sees beauty in conformity, and anything that does not conform is deformity.

What are these group guidelines to beauty? They tend to be conflicting. To be beautiful, we must disallow hair to grow where it will. However, we also need to make sure that hair will grow where it has decided it won't. A few years ago, a pierced ear disaster was when the holes enlarged. Now, we try to enlarge the holes by inserting larger and larger grommets, like the people we used to gawk at in pictures from the National Geographic. While we don't (yet) see a spatula-shaped lower lip as luscious, or a neck distended by stacked rings as elegant, great wind-whistling holes in our ears are to be desired.

To be considered attractive, we slather ourselves either with stuff to make our skin darker, or with stuff to keep us from getting darker. We cut our hair to help it grow out. For cosmetic reasons, we try to eat less than we need, while much of the world is trying to get just enough, for non-cosmetic reasons. Conflicting as our rules are, no one wins. If our group guidelines were made to define beauty, they only serve now to shame us. Shame is an ugly thing.

I have spent many years being confused by our ideas of beauty. But now that I am an aging woman, I can see where beauty rests. Those who are fully themselves, unapologetic and laughing, these are the beautiful people. The person who lives in confidence of his or her own value, alien dignity, is as lovely as the trees and the stars. The simple beauty of enthusiasm is a universal cosmetic, lighting all shades of skin and levels of income with a rightness that makes our ideas sing like a sympathetic violin.

The reason that everyone says "Aah" when the girl from Ipanema goes walking is because she is herself.

Sleep

I've been thinking about sleep, since about 2 a.m. tonight, and sometimes before that hour on other nights, and sometimes as late as 4 a.m. The thoughts are all relatively the same, and that is what I want to change.

The old thoughts run along the lines of "I should be asleep. I won't be able to function tomorrow if I don't get sleep."

Since I have been thinking this for a couple of years now, the evidence seems to be in. I am able to function without 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep. Perhaps I should define function better, but I am able to drive machinery, enter data, and converse. Maybe I get a little punchy in the conversation. I might enter some wrong numbers or information. And I did recently scare my husband when I was driving...

I would be more clear about my definition of function if I could just get some sleep!

Which is really the sum of my complaint: without good rest, I seem to travel in a fog, just on the edge of experiences without being able to touch reality. Maybe insomnia is my protective mechanism for going through life's changes?

A year ago, or was it two?, I said I was sleep-depriving myself for a vision quest. All that happened, though, was my vision got worse with fatigue.

I remember an uncle and aunt out on the farm in Nebraska talking about being up since 5 a.m. and how they would just watch tv, smoke, and wait for the dawn. I thought they were talking about farm life. Now, I think maybe they were talking about sleep patterns as we age.

Since just about everyone I know near my age is talking about not sleeping, I will conclude that this is just the way things are for this time in life. What do I want to do with that information? Complain? Chill?

One help I have found, by accident, is a remedy from the health food store called "L-Ornithine." It says nothing on the bottle about sleep aid. It does, however, help me to sleep through the night. I ran out last night.

Life is giving me the lemon of sleeplessness. I think I'll make a lemonade of catching up on my reading.