Friday
22Aug
Look at me
Friday, August 22, 2008 at 12:22 
As you can see in this photo, I even feel uncomfortable in a bathing suit top. Where is my favorite black Montauk sweatshirt and sunglasses? I do not even have a tan and the summer is almost over.
Shy girl....not a natural ham as one who visits my site and blog might think. I like ham though, but I don't eat it because I think pigs are adorable.
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Reader Comments (3)
This assumes that the notion of beauty can be said to occur at all in a spider's experience; a debate I defer to others.
Another possible exception is the neutral response as conveyed as perspective. Even inanimate objects can be said to have a sort of 'perspective' in the geometric sense of relation (as in when we say a painting, for instance "has perspective"). A rock when you kick it may be thought to have a perspective of the foot. But can there be 'beauty' where there is no emotion or intellect to experience it, apart from the anthropomorphical attribution by some people of animistic potential in all things? This aspect of the question will likely come down to the experiencer/experienced paradox that appears to have no coherent resolution. As it was for the Greeks, beauty can be thought of as an absolute experience independent from, and not relative to, individual interpretation. In this sense, beauty would be present, or not, in an object, regardless of what the beholder experiences. Objective beauty.
Or, as one of Gail Moher's early favorite singers, Ray Stevens put it, "Everything is Beautiful in it's Own Way." Here, Stevens draws upon the ancient notion that all things are unified in a single creation which is inherently beautiful because it encompasses all things, and all things express all other things, including ugliness and beauty. Then the question is why chose one description over another? If everything is everything, don't opposites cancel each other out--the irresolvable problem of dualistic belief systems?
Most people would just say fuck it, let's move on here, this can't be proved. But then, my comment would be too short for a Friday afternoon, so.....
What do we have, then, when we throw out the ideas of yin/yang, good/evil. all polar opposites of absolute value? In simple terms, we have a combination of the two coexisting in all things simultaneously, attributes therein describable only in relative terms. Alternately, we have the relativism of no absolute attributes occurring in anything other than the observer's mind. (Plato's refutation in Phaedra of this later idea is interesting in that it raises the question of culpability in the observer; we don't know if some one is telling the truth about his or her response to beauty, it might change over time, etc., so we can't define a 'relative' point of view.)
It would be sheer megalomania for me, or anyone else, to declare something objectively beautiful simply on the basis of it's experience in our mind. And to say that from "every perspective" some one or thing is beautiful would seem to be a claim that falls into this category. Regardless of the psychological extremities from which this discussion apparently proceeds, I will attempt a rational solution based on the assertions listed so far. To recap:
1. A non-dualistic system must necessarily have the simultaneous existence of beauty, non-beauty, and neutrality in all things to a greater or lesser degree, or in equal amounts.
2. A dualistic system must necessarily be also relativistic in the sense that beauty, non-beauty, and neutrality depend on the individual's experience of a thing.
From 1 above, the statement that Lori's beauty is "perfect from every possible perspective" is necessarily true (as it would be with every other thing in the universe, rendering the statement meaningless).
From 2 above, the truth of the same statement would appear to depend on the individual's point of view.
But what comprises the "individual" pov in a dualistic system? I would argue that focus is the primary element in this determination, then synthesis to form an aesthetic response. Arguing from the absurd, one could focus on some isolated part and not see beauty, but does the part make the whole? Conversely, the whole could be seen as non-beauty, but does this then eliminate each individual part from the evaluation? Would it be truer to say that at least "some part" of Lori is beautiful from every possible perspective? In a dualistic system, does the judgement of non-beauty in every part of a given thing or person proceed from complete negativity, and therefore pose a contraction to itself?
Okay, now that's long enough. ;-)