Thursday, August 09, 2007
The Beautiful Ones
A girl steps into my tutorial room, her body svelte, her hair a silky ginger, her eyes dark and flashing, her lips a cherry pout. Tim, who moments ago is engaged in conversation with me, looks up, agog. He cannot take his eyes off her. E___, who only seconds before was telling a joke in her endearingly hesitant way, falters. K___'s smile wavers for a second. Is_____, originally the beauty in the class, stiffens. For a micro second the room falls into silence, a silence so quick and so painful it is like the stillness between heartbeats, or the darkness between the blinking of an eye.
So. Stunningly. Beautiful.
A dull ache creeps up in my spinchter, and I immediately recognise it for what it is. Jealousy. Envy. A throbbing shade of green beneath my lids. Oh, if only I possesed beauty like that! I could have the world between my fingertips, and so much more.
There is something cold about her. She is aloof, uncommunicative. Her chin is held at a high angle, and she peers at us mere mortals beneath her dark, mascared lashes. She stays silent during the tutorial; she does not contribute; she does not even appear to be listening. As the minutes tick by she becomes less beautiful, and much more brittle and glassy. She is someone for whom beauty is an end to itself. An ornamental quality which is not echoed from within.
It only reminds me of a stanzaa from Yeats' poem, A Prayer for my Daughter
"May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend."
Perhaps I will go to every week's tutorial feeling sulky and jealous until I learn to deal with this, but intellectually I know that there is also goodness in not being beautiful, and great fortune in having the love of friends (note: I'm not including family in this one, many of my family members have damaged me enough) make up for what the external lacks.
So. Stunningly. Beautiful.
A dull ache creeps up in my spinchter, and I immediately recognise it for what it is. Jealousy. Envy. A throbbing shade of green beneath my lids. Oh, if only I possesed beauty like that! I could have the world between my fingertips, and so much more.
There is something cold about her. She is aloof, uncommunicative. Her chin is held at a high angle, and she peers at us mere mortals beneath her dark, mascared lashes. She stays silent during the tutorial; she does not contribute; she does not even appear to be listening. As the minutes tick by she becomes less beautiful, and much more brittle and glassy. She is someone for whom beauty is an end to itself. An ornamental quality which is not echoed from within.
It only reminds me of a stanzaa from Yeats' poem, A Prayer for my Daughter
"May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend."
Perhaps I will go to every week's tutorial feeling sulky and jealous until I learn to deal with this, but intellectually I know that there is also goodness in not being beautiful, and great fortune in having the love of friends (note: I'm not including family in this one, many of my family members have damaged me enough) make up for what the external lacks.
Labels: Beauty, University
# posted by me lah @ 7:40 pm 
