| The Story:
It took place years
ago, in a large and imposing museum in New York City. I don't
remember precisely what year it was, nor do I recollect which
of the several very large museums in New York City it was (but
there was a lovely little park right across the street from that
museum; this I remember quite clearly, because I sat in that park,
in the rain, all night long, one night many years ago, never taking
my eyes off the front doors of the museum across the street, praying
that when they opened again an angel might still be there...).
I experienced many things that day - things I never even knew
existed before; and, gentle reader, I can assure you that when
I left the museum that day, I was a different - and better -
person than I was when I walked in. But, in spite of the ravages
of time, the experience remains etched very clearly and distinctly
in my mind (such that is left of it, anyway :). So, if there is
an interest, here is the story:
I was taking a leisurely tour of this great museum building,
replete with great works of art by the greatest artists of the
greatest ages, on a warm spring afternoon. I was researching a
report for a course in art history, which required of
students a trip to several museums, and a written report of the
experiences submitted. At the time, I was not much of an art lover;
but I get ahead of myself.
And so it was, at that stately museum, that I found myself
wondering among the works of art. As I meandered from one great
exhibit hall to another, I would occasionally pass several different
groups of people taking one of the museum tours led by a docent,
or tour guide. Among one of those groups which I would occasionally
encounter, I noticed a most lovely young lady. She
was somehow different; beautiful, certainly, but something more
than that; something I couldn't quite define, but could clearly
recognize. It was almost as if there was a golden
glow around her. But I went on my way, taking notes for the report
I would be required to submit for the art class. I passed this
young lady's tour group several times as they and I moved about
the museum. Trying hard not to seem as if I was looking for her,
I would nevertheless attempt to catch another glimpse of her whenever
I could. This girl possessed, what seemed to me, a certain air
of refinement, as well as beauty. But, as with the usual circumstances
of daily life wherein you may catch sight of someone who is in
some way attractive or striking to you, I simply continued on
my way, moving to and fro among the crowds of people that float
through everyone's daily life.
However, as I circulated throughout this huge museum, I made
it a point to seek out a glimpse of her whenever I passed her
tour group. Nothing particularly unusual or different from most
of the days we all experience. Being quite shy, the thought of
actually approaching this girl, never entered my mind. Although
I would never have presumed to introduce myself to her; I did
manage to catch the eye of the young lady in question, and we exchanged a pleasant smile on a couple of occasions.
I proceeded through the museum and continued to take my notes,
moving from one exhibit hall to the next on a largely random basis.
As fate would have it, about half an hour after last seeing her tour group,
I noticed this girl walking alone in an exhibit hall dedicated
to sculpture. I presumed her group's tour had ended, and she wished
to linger a bit among the artwork. As we were both trekking through
this repository of ageless aesthetic creations, I paused in front
of a huge, hulking stone sculpture of a most unpleasant and ugly
beast, and she walked up next to me to look at it, too.
Perhaps the sculpture was a gargoyle, but if not, certainly
something similar. It must have been ten or fifteen feet tall,
massive beyond description, towering over us with grotesque malevolence.
It sat before us hunched over, with it's limbs coiled in wrath,
seemingly ready to spring forward and tear us (or any unlucky
living creature in its vicinity) to shreds, crushing our bones
like toothpicks in its great jaws. Its horrifying lips were curled
back in hatred, exposing a mouthful of sharp, gigantic teeth.
Dripping from it's hateful fangs was what could have been globs
of saliva, but seemed to me more likely the blood of it's last
victim. As I realized the appalling horror of this creature, I
stepped back a bit, almost involuntarily, trying to make it seem
as if I were jockeying for a better view of the gigantic monstrosity,
but deep inside I knew it was fear that had sent me backwards.
For a few seconds, there was silence. I stood before the beast
trying to look intelligent and studious, as well as trying hide
the shiver that ran down my spine, when, in a quiet, gentle voice,
the girl murmured: "Isn't it beautiful?"
"Beautiful," I spat out. "That's the ugliest
thing I've ever seen!" As soon as the words escaped my lips,
I regretted having said them. Contradicting someone you would
hope to impress favorably was a somewhat less than tactful way
to enter a conversation, I realized.
She just stood there, quietly, smiling at my reaction. To be
honest, I don't know her name; I don't think I ever did know her
name; but her small, graceful frame, long light brownish-blond
hair with the golden highlights reflecting the afternoon sunlight
streaming in through the window, delicate features, and striking
blue eyes, I will never forget. Ever. She seemed so small and
delicate and fragile, especially standing there in front of that
tremendous, angry, hulking monster. Her vulnerability was such,
and the threatening position and proximity of the beast so near,
I was almost overcome by a desire to shield her from the danger
of the coiled beast. It was all I could do, to refrain from reaching
over and embracing her, protectively, at that moment (as if I
could protect anyone from the giant monster). But, to hide the
tenderness I felt for her, and the fear I felt from the beast,
I said, yet again, something stupid, like "Are you nuts?
How can you see beauty in a monster like this?" gesturing
towards the beast that stood before us.
Quite unexpectedly, she reached over and gently took my hand,
and without saying a word, led me over to a marble bench a few
yards away from the monstrosity. We sat down, and there was a
moment of silence, before she softly began explaining to me how
one can look, but not really see. Now, at that time, what she
said just didn't make sense to me; how you can look but not see?
If you look (presuming you're not blind), you see what you're
looking at, I reasoned. But, fortunately, this time I kept my
mouth shut and let her go on. She must have been European, or
at least not American, because nobody in New York City reaches
out to take the hand of a complete stranger. I was both shocked
and pleased at the familiarity of this lovely young lady. I can
feel her small, delicate hand taking mine, and hear the softness
of her voice, still. She had a very slight accent, almost imperceptible,
which I couldn't place then, nor can I now. Perhaps Scandinavian,
I thought to myself, or perhaps slightly Austrian or German. I'll
probably never know for sure, but that doesn't matter.
She looked into my eyes for a moment, and then began speaking
softly, but earnestly. I was almost mesmerized, not only by her
beauty, which was considerable, but by the sweetness of her voice,
the blueness of her eyes, which ventured back and forth between
me and the beast as she spoke, and the gentleness of her touch.
She was amazingly articulate and knowledgeable, I remember thinking,
for someone so young; she couldn't have been much past her teens,
but that of which she spoke held me spellbound. I'm not sure of
all she said to me there, in that museum in New York, nor of how
long she spoke, but I'll never forget what she taught me, and
I remember clearly that it was late, and dark outside, by the
time we left that museum.
As I sat there, enchanted by her beauty, amazed by her knowledge,
enthralled by her words, she explained to me how this hideous,
gigantic demon was created more than a thousand years before Jesus
Christ walked this earth. She told me how an artist, unnamed and
unknown to us, without equipment or modern tools, turned a massive
granite boulder into a work of art that not only survived the
millennia, but retained the majesty and power to provoke and arouse
for over a hundred generations. She told of the rudimentary tools,
of the lack of techniques, and of the years that were required
to hew and pound, to grave and score, to chip and polish and turn
a rock into a spectacular masterpiece. She led me back over to
the horrid sculpture, and, taking my hand in hers, ever so gently
guided my fingers over the immense beast's stone flesh, tracing
back and forth over its frame, pausing momentarily upon textures
and lines, teaching me the technique of seeing through touch.
She pointed out the infinitesimal fineness of the tiny, almost
microscopic chips of stone that were lovingly and infinitely,
painstakingly, cut, bit by bit, chip by chip, day after day, out
of the massive rock, slowly, painfully, hewing it into shape.
To this day, I can close my eyes, as I'm doing right now as I
write these words, and see clearly, and in sharp detail, the huge
beast, and the slight girl, and I can still feel the smoothness
of the granite as my fingers slid over the body of the beast,
and the blueness of her eyes and the gentleness of her voice and
the softness of her touch....
It slowly became obvious to me, standing there in front of
that towering, gargantuan figure, that it must have taken someone,
literally, years of his (her?) life to create it. The artist must
have possessed both great talent, in a time where there were no
art schools or courses in depth or nuance or light or technique,
as well as a great love for his craft, in order to have conceived
and endured, and created it. Upon closer examination, I saw the
millions upon millions of blows, large and small, hard and soft,
and the tiny, intricately wrought chips of stone, and time and
effort expended in its creation. I saw the talent and dedication;
I saw the care and the sacrifice and the work and the years of
hard labor that gave birth to the massive beast.
As her soft, gentle voice enthralled me with its tone, and
she surprised and amazed me with her obvious breeding and education,
her small hand would reach out to take mine as she led me from
the bench to the beast and back. Again and again, her words carried
me through the centuries, as her hand led me to the beast to make
a point, or show me the skill and constancy of the artist. She
spoke with a compassion and empathy and tenderness and love for
art and beauty and sacrifice I had never before experienced. Nor
have I since that day.
It's hard to say at exactly what point I began to see things
differently, but somewhere between that marble bench and the hideous
beast with curled lips and sharp teeth dripping with blood, the
ugliness slowly, imperceptibly, faded and disappeared, to be replaced
with a beauty deeper and more intense than I had ever known, than
I had ever even suspected, before that day. And for the first time in my
life, I felt overwhelmed by an appreciation of the skill and sacrifice
and love and devotion inherent in the creation of something magnificent,
something beyond description, something that could endure throughout
the ages... For the very first time in my life, I felt.. I FELT
beauty.
I have on occasion been accused being capable of eloquence,
gentle reader, but in this matter I am at a total loss for words
to convey what happened to me on that day in the museum. It was
the epiphany about which I had read, but never believed existed,
and it was happening to me. It was indescribable; no words
to which I have access can convey the shock, the bolt of comprehension,
the almost organic understanding of something I had neither believed
existed nor would have acknowledged in another, had I not then
and there experienced it myself. It was a revelation, a knowing
of something so deeply and so comprehensively and so beautifully,
that I might have described it as of an almost a religious intensity
(had I not been an agnostic at that time). I had never before
experienced anything even remotely akin to that which was happening
to me that day. It was as if
I had spent my whole life seeing the world "through a glass,
darkly." It was as if I was born wearing dark glasses, without
ever realizing it, until the darkness was removed by this most
beautiful and amazing girl.
Suddenly, everywhere I looked, there was a beauty of unimaginable
proportions! The paintings on the walls were beautiful; the sky
outside the window was beautiful; the horrible, ugly beast was
incredibly beautiful; the marble bench upon which we were sitting
- which only a moment ago was nothing more than a place to sit
- was magnificently beautiful. I saw the millions of years the
earth took to create the marble, I saw the time and labor to quarry
the marble in Italy and bring it thousands of miles across the
sea to America; I saw the craftsmanship in shaping and polishing
it; I saw the beauty of the swirling colors; I saw Beauty everywhere
I looked, and for the very first time in my life I understood
how one can "look" but not "see." And when
my gaze returned to the girl, a golden glow surrounded her, and
she was truly the most unbelievably, intensely beautiful creature I had ever
seen. In retrospect, gentle reader, my mind desperately reasoned that the
late afternoon sunlight, streaming in through the museum's great
windows, illuminated her golden hair, and made it seem as if there
was a golden halo around her. My heart, on the other hand, would
have none of it! She was the most unbelievably, exquisitely, magnificently breathtakingly
gorgeous thing that I had ever seen, and - without a doubt - she
was an Angel! A most fabulous and exquisite Angel. She was so
exquisitely beautiful that I could not bear to gaze upon her for
another second! I closed my eyes as tightly as I could, certain
that if I looked upon such beauty for another second, I would literally
die from the magnificence of her beauty.
With my eyes as tightly closed as I was capable of doing, I
stood there fighting it with every ounce of my strength. I was
young, and I was ashamed, and embarrassed, and I can still feel
my teeth clenching so hard and so tight that my jaw ached, and
I began to tremble with the effort to stop it from happening,
but no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't
stop the tears from rolling down my face. And to be perfectly
honest with you, dear reader, with this recollection, I can feel
the tears coming back again. Excuse me a moment...
Sorry about that; but what I didn't get a chance to tell you
is that when she saw what was happening to me, standing there
in the museum in front of that gigantic, horridly ugly/magnificiantly beautiful, beast,
she reached out and put her arms around me and hugged me more
tightly than I had ever been hugged before, and I hugged her back,
and we stood there for what seemed like an eternity, in an embrace
that I can feel still. Honestly, sometimes, when I close my eyes
and wrap my arms around myself as if I were holding her again,
I can still feel her in my arms, and smell her hair, and feel
the wetness of my tears dripping down my cheeks onto her hair,
and I can still see the dark streaks on her long, blond hair where
the wetness of my tears left their trails, and then I can feel
her arms holding me ever so tightly....
I don't know if she had ever experienced a situation like this
before, or if giving people epiphynous experiences when they were
least expecting it was a hobby of hers, or how she knew what to
do, or why she wouldn't have run away when some stranger, who
must have looked like he was having some sort of mental breakdown
in the middle of a museum in front of a gargoyle, started shaking
and crying, but she held onto me and hugged me and comforted me
until.... until everything was all right....
After that, after I had stopped trembling, and could control
the tears again, she led me back to the bench, and we sat down
for a few minutes, neither one of us saying anything, until they
announced that the museum was closing. As we stood up to leave,
I began to say something, probably to ask her what her name was,
or where she came from, or how she knew so much about all this
stuff, or something like that. She took my hand again and said
"Shhh, we'd better go." It occurred to me that she might
be right. Again. As we were walking towards the doors, I wanted
to thank her for.... well, for so many things that she had just
done for me, a complete stranger, no less, like showing me beauty
where before I had seen only ugliness, and for explaining so many
things, and I also really wanted to apologize for crying all over
her, but as we arrived at the front doors of the museum, she said
"look outside; it's raining." I was happy about
that, because a plan had just sprung to my benumbed mind; I figured
I'd take her to dinner and propose, and... well I really didn't
know what, but I knew I couldn't possibly make any more of a fool
out of myself than I already had. And the one thing about which
I had no doubt at all was that I wanted to find out more about
this most unique, amazing, wonderful, and lovely girl. So I said,
"Wait here, I'll get us a cab." She started to say something,
but I didn't give her a chance. I let go of her hand and ran out
into the rain and hailed a cab. I opened the cab door with a gentlemanly
flourish, and when I looked back at the doors of the museum, she
was gone.
I never saw her again. I don't think I'll ever forgive myself
for letting go of her hand just inside the front doors to that
museum in New York City. A lot of water has gone by under the
bridges of life since then; but I'll be forever grateful for her
kindness; for the wonderful and wondrous gift she gave to a stranger
that day. And, if, in the fullness of time, by some strange quirk
of fate, that girl should happen to come across these words, I'd
like to say... about a million things. But I'll keep it short;
just two things, five little words, that I wish I'd had the chance--or
the wisdom-- to say to you that most fateful day in the doorway
of the museum in New York City before I let go of your hand: "Thank
you. I love you."
In any event, gentle reader, that was the day I first learned
to see, to feel, to know, Beauty; Beauty with a capital B. In
retrospect, it's not fair of me to say that I learned anything.
"I learned" implies there was a certain proactive intent
or motivation on my part to acquire something. There really wasn't.
That wasn't my paradigm at the time. I didn't go forth seeking
to learn anything. I was just there. I was just hanging out. It
would be more correct, I believe, to say I was taught it. I don't
know why I was given that gift; I certainly don't think I deserved
to receive it. I have no idea why it came on that day, in that
museum in New York City. I don't know why it was delivered to
me by that wonderful, angelic young girl. I don't know. As time
goes by, it becomes much more clear to me that I really don't
know very much at all. I guess when it's your time to be endowed
with an understanding of something, you're given it as a gift.
A precious and wonderful gift from God, whoever or whatever you
may conceive Him to be. Or maybe, just maybe, He sends an Angel
to give it to you.
I've been all around the world since that fateful spring day
in New York City; and wherever in the world I go, from Honolulu
to London to Bombay, I check out the museums. I'll often linger
a bit around gargoyles and similar types of sculpture. Just in
case.
Well, that's about all I can write for now, dear visitor. There's
really a lot more I wanted to get to, on the subject of seeing
beauty or ugliness in things, and the story I've just related
to you was *not* among them. But right now, I'm just a little
too emotionally drained. I don't think I ever intended to tell
anyone about this, at least not as thoroughly and as honestly
as it has come out here. I try not to think about it too often;
it hurts too much. But once it started coming, even though I really
tried to stop a couple of times, it was as if this story acquired
a life and a power of its own; it just wouldn't stop... it wouldn't
stop coming out until it was finished. Perhaps there's a reason
I was compelled to write it, after all this time. Y'know, it's
funny; I've never told anyone about this before. Sure, I may have
mentioned that I had discovered how to recognize beauty a couple
of times. But I never told anyone about the girl, or what happened
to me in the museum that day. And now, here I am spilling my guts
out to the cyberworld. I don't know why. Maybe... maybe it'll
help someone else. Maybe not. Perhaps it will be meaningful in
some way, to someone who might be destined to come across these
words. Maybe not. But whatever it means, whatever it meant, no
matter how much it hurts to recall, I can't think of even a single
second of it I'd change.
Except maybe letting go of her hand to run out in the rain after
that damned cab. Maybe I'd change that. If I could. If I only
could.
RM |