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Wednesday, October 13, 2010
There are homely people, ugly people, jaded people, those especially, who were never homely and yet once very beautiful…and then there are the true, pure beauties of this world, the ones who were born with sunshine on their brows, who never were told not to feel that golden feeling over their heads, who shone as bright as any light on a dark and clear summer night…
These, those ones, are very few and far between…but they do exist…and even as they grow old, they shine on….
One…in particular…
The Dorothy character in the classic, iconic World War II historical drama, “The Summer of ‘42”
Man…wow…nope…no woman, not even Liz Taylor, can hold a match to this beauty…or am I just prejudiced to Irish lasses…okay, well, Hell, maybe so…but damn if we don’t rock?!
I don’t think you can manufacture innocence or purity or naiveté or a Joie de Vivre…its just born into you and sustained in you, til you die, and that, that essence, shines for all time, on your face, and in your heart, golden, soft, sincere, vulnerable, yes, but worth the risk, to shine everlasting, in spite of it all.
As time goes by for myself…maybe because I am forced to face reality, I'm realizing that sexuality, sensuality, true beauty, doesn’t stem from an iconic lust image but from within, the beauty you had as a kid playing soccer on your school yard, your rosy cheeks, your laughing smile, those agile thighs, with never a thought of how you were getting your next breath….
Maybe those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, with Nat King Cole on your parents “Hi-Fi” singing the same, your scrawny legs lazily waving in the cool Pond water, is what differentiates a true beauty from a made-up one…
Maybe the kid who ate snow on the bank of that in-the-dead-of-winter Pond skating rink, who thought nothing of, nor an un-lady-like doubt, that to wipe her runny nose on her her sleeve in a heated game, was anything out of the ordinary. Maybe that Tom Girl ended up being the true making of a female beauty, the type who knew never the need nor purpose for make-up, the need nor purpose for attracting the opposite sex, who only knew that if Bobby didn't get out of her way as she held that puck on her stick to the goal, he would not father future children in his stupidity…sigh…yeah…smile…uh-huh….
Maybe…when she got older, her ice skates safely tucked away, Nat King Cole’s version of
“Unforgettable” just made more sense.
Yeah, she’d see her parents dance close to that song, at the end of one cocktail party or another, in the 60s or 70s, thinking that they were indeed truly dedicated morons…yeah…smile…geez…
Now…wow…frig…how come that song now just brings tears to my eyes…?
Man…beauty…uh-huh…Unforgettable…
People either have it or they don’t, right? And seldom does it have to do with any whimsical, physical traits…somehow, their heart, their soul, their passion, just bursts through, like some sort of atomic ray…so piercing you have little time to debate the issue…
The people who don’t have it, spend a fortune trying to get it, especially in their later years, when all the time, if they had just seen the merit of hunting tadpoles in ponds close to where they lived, on the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, as a child, that such inner beauty would have been achieved through just pure and innocent joy, on their faces, and in their hearts…forever shining though…
Yes…
In the end, Dorothy, in The Summer of ‘42, gets that feared telegram, telling her that the love of her life has just died in WWII, as so many new wives received back then, that so many new wives, of the Iraq/Afghanistan war, are receiving now…
And because of that trauma, are we ever to judge Dorothy for her sexual transgression then, when life, as she knew it in the end was so tenuous, and her life, as she knew it all along, was still so young and new, her needing a physical connection to the past, her needing just to be wanted…
Even in the midst of grief for her one and only true love…beauty can and will shine though…
Sometimes the end result can be seen as tawdry when the process was anything but…please don’t judge Dorothy…lest we all be judged.
If, per chance, you happen upon an older woman, yes, maybe beyond her lustful prime, but still full of inner beauty and outer grace, stop, say Hi, give her your hand across that curb…she may have been your Grandfather’s first love on a weed-strewn Long Island beach, that very summer in 1942, the ultimate essence of beauty, for Him, Heaven on Earth in female form, the lines on her face only an echo of the breezes she felt off the Atlantic ocean, waiting only for Him…
Dangling your scrawny legs in a pond, or in the ocean waves…yes…that’s how you can achieve true , unadulterated beauty.
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