Café Philos: an internet café

I blame my mother for teaching me three truths about youth.

The first of her truths is that all girls are pretty and all boys are handsome. I used to hate being taught that one by her.

She taught it to me throughout my childhood and adolescence. She did it simply: Merely by praising the beauty of myself and my young friends. I hated it when she did that because it sounded false to my naive ears. Especially during adolescence, I couldn't believe she was anything but a lunatic when it came to beauty, because I had a markedly different standard of beauty than hers.

I had internalized the standards of my peers. Among ourselves, we had no sense of the universal beauty of youth. We didn't see that truth. One of us might be beautiful, but certainly not all of us. Certainly not our classes' ugliest girl nor most homely boy. So I would shrink in fright each time my mother pronounced that one or another of my classes' "less attractive" boys or girls was beautiful. I'd think, "Has anyone overheard her besides me? I'll die if they discover my Mom is an idiot! "

Roughly around 40, I discovered for myself the universal beauty of youth. That is, I finally saw what my mother had been talking about all those years. The beauty of youth transcends whatever happens to be fashionable beauty. It is timeless and universal.

The second truth my mother taught me was how transparent a youth is to an adult.

Mostly she did that by instantly seeing through my every pretension. Many times when we're growing up, we want to put on a front, we want to have pretensions, and we especially do not want our mothers to see through those pretensions. Instead, we want the sense of privacy that comes with imagining no one else knows we're bluffing.

Yet, just as a six year old is transparent to a 16 year old, so is a 16 year old transparent to a full adult. To this day, I have mixed feelings about that truth.

On the one hand, I've learned over the years that it is basic human nature to play at being something before one becomes something. Like all mammals, humans in most cases learn best through play. If you want to be a charitable person, first "play pretend" you are a charitable person. If you want to be a good lover, first "play pretend" you are a good lover. Playing/pretending kicks in whatever gears there are in our brains that allow us to learn very complex behaviors. So, to the extent we put on fronts as part of that learning process, it's not all that helpful when your mother tells you to "quit pretending to be something you're not."

On the other hand, when your mother tells you to "quit pretending", it can be a great lesson in the futility of living inauthentically. The trick is whether your mother knows you well enough to steer you away from trying to become something untrue to your nature, and instead tries to steer you towards becoming things true to your nature. That's largely what my mother did, and today I'm grateful to her for it.

She allowed and even encouraged me to play pretend at things that developed my natural talents into skills. She discouraged me from playing pretending at things I had little or no natural talent for, or which were anti-social. She was able to do that because she was some 39 years older than me and my own true nature was transparent to her.

At 37, I moved to Colorado. Through a strange set of circumstances it happened the first 200 or so people I met here were mostly kids. Some of them attached themselves to me, and I used to wonder why they willingly attached themselves to a man two decades their senior.

One day the answer came to me: I was doing for them what my mother had done for me. I was encouraging them to be true to themselves in the same persistent and often subtle ways my mother had encouraged me to be true to myself. That's what they wanted and even needed from a man two decades their senior -- someone who could see through their insecure fronts, and encourage their true selves.

The final truth my mother taught me about youth is the tragedy of wasted potential. This was something she taught through her comments on people. As I was growing up, she would occasionally point out how this or that person had wasted their talents. She never made a big deal of it, and her comments were always more or less in passing, but her point nevertheless sank in.

Is some part of youth's universal beauty the almost tangible sense of potential that young people exude? I don't know. But I know potential is thick on youth. I know that youth is a time when crucial steps are taken -- or at least should be taken -- to realize that potential. And I know that a thousand pitfalls await youth which will prevent all but a minority of them from ever fully realizing their genuine potential. That last strikes me as an especially poignant tragedy, and I think the reason the tragedy of wasted potential affects me as deeply as it does is in part because of my mother's teachings.

Again, this is something I saw most clearly in my late 30s and 40s, and if you have kindly read this essay, you will know by now that's a pattern with how I've absorbed my mother's teachings about youth. In each case, she pointed me to look. But in each case, I either didn't look, or perhaps couldn't look, at what she pointed until I was middle-aged. Yet, once I looked, I saw clearly what she had been all those years talking about.

Now, if I add all three of those lessons together to make a sum, then I get something like this: My mother prepared me through her teachings to clearly see, once I was older, how beautiful youth is, how important it is that youth learns to be true to itself, and how tragic it is when it doesn't.

All in all, I think those are some pretty profound lessons.

Earlier, Don and I drove out of town south into a hazy fall afternoon. We speculated the haze could be coming from the large California fires, for there seemed no other source for it. It's happened before that smoke has drifted hundreds of miles into Colorado from large fires as far away as California. Was that happening today?

No way of to be certain. But the distant mountains to the south and west were obscured by the haze while above us the sky still embraced the royal blue depth of a perfect autumn day.

I hadn't driven south of Colorado Springs in well over two years. You forget how beautiful the hills and canyons are. The colors are mostly understated and subtle in the fall. Olive junipers dot the yellow grasses, cling to the sandy red cliffs like freckles. The deeper greens of Ponderosa and pinon pines crowd the junipers, and the scrub oak has copper leaves. All respectable earth tones. But then along the water courses, the light bursts as it falls into the luminous yellow leaves of the cottonwoods.

Gorges and canyons, mesas and buttes. The land seems eternal here. It's hard to believe people own it -- you think more of the land owning them.

There's defiance of the land in some of the houses people have built. Houses whose architecture is traditional in distant parts of America -- in the northeast, for instance -- but not here in Colorado. You can't look at those houses without imagining some newcomer has tried to transplant a bit of the lush eastern United States, complete with well watered bluegrass lawns, to the rocky, thin soils of the arid west. Maybe he got homesick for a more congenial landscape. Maybe he's in denial he no longer lives in Massachusetts, Georgia or Kentucky. Whatever the case, it's not really your problem -- yet in this land, his home is an alien.

Some miles south of the Springs, Don and I turned off the main road and, after a few miles, entered Phantom Canyon. Phantom Canyon is a narrow gorge whose rock walls rise 150 or 200 feet. It winds for miles up into the Rockie Mountains -- right into the heart of the high gold country. The road changed from asphalt to gravel, and then from gravel to earth. The walls were mostly red rock deeply fractured by the weather, like an old man's face; and brilliant cottonwoods lined the floor of the canyon.

It's strange how in some parts of Colorado you can see everywhere the evidence of people -- you are after all, traveling a road built by people -- and yet you almost feel you are the first person to explore the land. Twice in the Canyon cars passed us coming from the other direction and each time the occupants waved to us as if we were the first people they'd seen all month. I think that feeling of being a little bit beyond the boundaries of society doesn't just come from the scarcity of people on the Phantom Canyon road. I think it comes from the way the world rises up 150 to 200 feet above you. I think it comes from the way the trees, the grasses, and the brush obey their own laws -- not some gardener's laws. I think it comes from the uncivilized quiet that confronts you when you finally stop and step out of your car. But whatever the source of it, the effect is to give you a slightly different perspective on yourself.

It's not the beauty of nature that most inspires me to reflect on myself. Nature is not always beautiful. But nature is always indifferent. And it's that indifference that inspires both thought and feeling about the human condition.

You can never really put what you learn about yourself from nature in words because what you learned, you didn't learn from words. Rather, you simply experienced a truth. You can write all the commentaries you want about your experiences, but you cannot recreate them through those commentaries. Words never brought a fractured rock cliff into existence.

At times, it seems that societies revolve around the ego. Perhaps it can even seem they are huge conspiracies to make the ego primary in this world. I think the ego is just as much a part of us -- of who we are as a species -- as our eyes and noses, and I reject any ideology that calls for the annihilation of the ego. Yet, I don't think the ego is of primary importance. I think it has its place, but that place is not central.

I believe I see that most clearly when I am out in nature, away from society, away from its tendency to make the ego primary. Yet, it is also out in nature when I feel I am being most true to myself. Is that a paradox?

First, I should say I'm in love with the photo in the sidebar this week. The model's expression is calm and enigmatic. She's not a conventional beauty, but the photo admirably brings out her style of beauty, which is almost classical. For some reason, the work reminds me of the time I've spent at clothing optional hot springs: calm, peaceful, meditative, and natural.

Yet for all I love about the photo, I think it would be improved if Al Calkin had lost the damn flower. That flower growing out of her head distracts from the model, rather than enhancing her. Besides, it's entirely cliche to associate womanhood with flowers. So, I wish that flower wasn't there. Does anyone else feel the same? What do you think of that flower?

I came across this photo over at The Primate Diaries and was floored. On a scale of 1 to 10, the model flat out achieves an 11 for sexy looks. She's either a very good actress, or she's about to jump the photographer.

I should be clear: What strikes me about this model is not her obvious physical beauty, but her expression. Even an "ugly" woman indulging in an expression like that would be powerfully sexy -- a force of nature. And it's that fact which most fascinates me about the photo.

At any rate, I'm struggling mightily this morning to deny my natural impulse to heap cash, jewels and expensive electronic toys at that woman's feet. Have you ever wondered how a mere look can have such an effect? That is, why does that expression affect me even though it's neither meant for me, nor am I otherwise attracted to that woman? Any comprehensive answer to those questions would need to deal, on a very fundamental level, with the power of art to move us.

I smoke more at night. It may have something to do with the pull of the quiet, yet disconcerting neighborhood outside the front door. I like to watch it. Like to listen to it.
I sit out there until my eyes are dry and sore, listening to the night, and watching the dampness cling to alley cats and teen boys' bicycles.

I live in the kind of neighborhood that is infected with cats, by the way. It's hard to tell if they belong to people, or if they're strays. None of them wear collars, as a license for a cat in Calgary costs a fair bit, and I often get the impression that all the cats are just eating mice and garbage and milling around.

I consider the fact that I'm not much different, when you get down to it.

Later at night, these cats get bolder. They push their noses up against the screen of the kitchen window when I go to get a glass of milk, and sometimes one will jump into my lap when I'm smoking on the front step.

I'm always shocked at how cold suburban cats can be. The cats of my childhood, with their sun-soaking and warm dry noses, don't exist here. These cats are frozen and desperate. Their affection is really just a cry for help.

They skulk around the curving streets and schoolyards with wild, fiery eyes, like they were possessed or something. I don't mind. I let them rub their faces on me until they jump away, suddenly remembering where they were going before they saw me.

Sometimes I scratch their chins. They don't always know what to make of that.

I feel like I'm working in an African orphanage. Their innocence is skewed, and awkward to me.
But I can't resist caring for them.

Only once in my life have I met someone so physically ugly I was repulsed, and it turned out that person did me a great act of kindness with no possibility of being rewarded for it.

The little girl to the left is a child beauty contestant from the film "Little Miss Sunshine". In filming the beauty contest scenes, "Little Miss Sunshine" forewent using actors and instead relied on girls who actually do compete in America's child beauty pageants.

You'll note the little girl is wearing over 17.3 pounds of makeup, has a sprayed on artificial tan and is dressed to appear sexy. From what I understand, that's all true to life. The girls in real pageants really are made up like that.

Now, I would think if you just had to have a contest in which you judged children's beauty, then you should judge their beauty as children -- not as fake adults. That's to say, I think kids are naturally beautiful as kids, and that dressing them up as sexy adults at best denatures their natural beauty. So, I wonder why anyone would do it?

What do you think?



My thanks to Eolake for inspiring this post.

A while back, I watched an episode of the Bill O'Reilly "comedy hour" during which Bill pretended to be scandalized that a teacher from a Northern state had vacationed in Florida, and while on vacation, had gone to a night club where she flashed her breasts for all the O'Reillys of the world to see. Naturally, Bill called on her school board to fire her. Bill is the Grand Old Prude of the Republic.

Somehow I got to thinking of that episode tonight, and along with thinking about it, recalled things I'd done that Bill would certainly disapprove of.

When I was new to Colorado Springs, I frequented a coffee shop a block from my apartment. The shop was near a high school, and consequently, the first 200 or so people I met in the Springs were mostly high school kids who frequented that same shop.

Several of those kids befriended me. They took to inviting me on all sorts of excursions -- from dances to rock climbs to road trips to sleep overs. Perhaps because I'd recently divorced, knew almost no one else in town besides those kids, and wanted a distraction, I almost always accepted any invitation from them. That's how, at 40, I ended up somewhat frequently going to clothing optional hot springs with high school kids.

The youngest of those kids was Harriett. When I met Harriett, she was a shy, quiet 15 year old genius bored to death with her school.

We met in the coffee shop when I walked up to were she was sitting alone and challenged her to a game of chess. After that introduction, she fell into the habit of seeking me out when I was in the shop and sitting with me, sometimes for hours -- but seldom saying much and never demanding my attention. Occasionally, we played chess.

So, I was surprised when one day her mother showed up at the place I worked asking for me. At that time, I knew Harriett only from the coffee shop, and then only as the girl who quietly sat away the hours on the fringes of the group I was a part of. But her mother revealed that Harriett had been coming home nearly every day to talk about what I'd said. In fact, Harriett had spoken so much about me to her mother that her mother now believed I had considerable influence on Harriett and thus wanted to meet me.

I started paying more attention to Harriett. I discovered, among other things, that she was exceptionally bright -- probably genius bright -- played the violin, piano and guitar -- was frequently depressed -- had an absent father -- had done modeling -- and knew nearly every artist in town due to her mother's participation in the local arts scene.

A few weeks after we met, Harriett's mother, Liz, and I got to talking about Valley View Hot Springs, and I think it was she who suggested I take Harriett along the next time I went to the Springs with a group of kids.

Valley View is located on the side of a mountain overlooking the world's largest intermountain valley, the San Luis. The nearest town of any size is 37 miles distant as the crow flies, and much further by road. At night, there are a billion stars over the valley in a sky so dark and deep you feel you sipped infinity looking at them.

The owners of Valley View keep the place as undeveloped as possible. You soak in natural pools, on beds of pebbles, sand, and moss. The wind sounds like a river rushing through the pines. In the evenings, you hear the coyotes calling to each other. Sometimes, wild mule deer come to feed on the grass by the pool you're soaking in.

There are people who believe Valley View is sacred, and they speak in whispers when there, as if in a cathedral. The perfect place to be naked to the world.

At the time, I saw nothing scandalous in a 40 year old man taking a 15 year old girl to a clothing optional hot springs. After all, Harriett was something of a sacred girl, and Valley View was something of a sacred place. It made emotional, poetic sense to give her the experience of that place, one of the most beautiful places in Colorado. Yet, looking back on it now, I realize both Liz and I were naive. Had word of that gotten to the wrong ears, Liz could have been charged with child abuse, Harriett summarily taken away from her, and I could have faced an investigation for statutory rape. People so often put the worse possible interpretations on things.

As I write this, the sun has just touched the uppermost blossoms on the apple tree in my back yard. The sight is so beautiful that it demands I become lost in it.

Have you noticed there can be a certain emotional pain in seeing the most beautiful things? The most deeply beautiful things sometimes disconcert us. We might even turn away from them. We might even make an effort to dismiss them. For the deeply beautiful things of this world have the power to challenge us to move out beyond ourselves; to loose, if even for a moment, the concerns, the thoughts and feelings that give us such a sense of self, such a sense of who we are and why we are so important to ourselves.

Sometimes, we would prefer to look at something ugly than to look at something beautiful precisely because the ugly thing does not make us yearn to be free of ourself; precisely because it does not challenge us in quite the same way beauty can challenge us to loose ourselves in it.

That's a truth that seems lost on those overtly sentimental works of art designed to provoke in us warm and fuzzy feelings towards the merely cute or the merely pretty.

Yet, the deeply beautiful things of this world have the power -- if we let them -- of refreshing and renewing us in ways that sentimental prettiness cannot. The deeply beautiful things can offer us a perspective on our selves that is far more life affirming than the feelings one might have towards an all too cutely rendered painting of an English cottage at dusk.

That's why it is so important to let go of oneself at times: To allow ourselves to become lost, perhaps in the sight of something deeply beautiful. Letting go can, when one is lucky, be life affirming. But genuine letting go of ourselves is not ego affirming. And hence, it is something that we all too often are not prepared to do. Our egos, necessary as they are at times, can make us cowards even towards experiencing something as simple and life affirming as the beauty of an apple blossom against the dawning sky.