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consequences, has been based on a simple discovery: stones and mud and air don't feel, have no will of their own, are not,never have been, alive - the world at large sweeps every-thing at random into more or less obscure ges-tation and destruction. It humiliates and dis-graces and disappoints entirely without inten-ding to; sets up and casts down without pur-pose; is unwittingly generous and unconscious-ly cruel; if a mother, irrational and unseeing; if a lover, sadistic when not neglectful and self-absorbed; a sort of sleep-walking narcissist. What then is this "love" that beauty seems so blatantly, almost embarrassingly, to announce? Yet in the joy of that awakening we barely give the question a thought: we are too dazzled by it. We don't see, so bright is the light break-ing over us: we're blinded by it. We hardly feel  | it: we are numbed into a joy surrounded by a sleep. We hardly seem to exist except in its already departing radiance. We yield to it all too willingly - but have we any choice? As soon as we wake, it dies - as soon as it dies, we waken. Beauty is like sleep itself turned for a moment into awakening, the dream sud-denly master of the day, the dreamer's little god. Obscure, suspicious words, yet maybe they point to what is, or at least toward what seems: The thought of beauty is the memory of being broken into happiness. Beauty flowers within the mind when we speak of it, in whispers, to ourselves: a wound in the numbness of being, a subordination to a largeness that excludes us yet beckons. It hurts us and baffles us; yet makes us drunk with joy.  | |||
