We are, as a race, hideously ugly, imho. There is no grace like the swan, no fur like the artic fox, no eyes like the timber wolf, no noble intentions like your common animal father, or mother...

We look at our reflection in the mirror. We know ourselves for our faults, our shortcomings, our failings. We know about that cigarette we just had despite our intentions to quit. We know about the lies we've told, the crimes we've committed. We know about the hurt our actions/ words/ or lack thereof has caused or will cause. We nurture the pain we've felt because it moves us, shakes us, creates us. We cherish the true love we've had as it uplifts us. We despise ourselves, love ourselves, kill ouselves...all as time allows.

There are millions of ways to call something beautifull. There are, however, very few ways to mean it. There are just as many ways to destroy something, and every method is as effective as the others...It is easier to destroy than to create, to create disorder out of order vs. vice versa...Science places it reins upon the concept of Entroy to explain this for our pysical universe, but there is so much beyond such a universe, so much within that science will not explain, but does it matter? Science is a cop-out sometimes anyway...we know the truth within ourselves. We see what is and what is not, based upon our own center of reality. Often these centers are far removed form the philosophical idea of "truth" or "reality". We work with what we've got.

There are a million measures of beautful, and it is the heart and the mind that perceives it, categorizes it, attempts in vain to rate it and describe it distinct from the rest. My list in order of importance varies from your list. My perception of myself invariably differs from your perception.

The woman pictured here is beautifull. Period. She doesn't believe so. She has trouble accepting herself, her face, her body, just as I often have trouble with this same acceptance of myself. She however, has had hurt like I could only imagine in my nightmares. She has seen suffering throughout her life that has bent her, warped her from the path once availible, that path that began b4 conception, as her soul (if you will) was awaiting a mother, a father, a conception, a family, a childhood, adolescence, education, friends, ideals, occupation, hobbies, etc...the world never revelas itself as perfect, not the slightest detail, and imperfections have a way of breaking the glass...

The woman you see in the background is beautifull. I would like to explain it to her as best I can why I see it that way. I shall deem it worth trying, and I can only hope it will not just be so many meaningless words upon deaf ears, upon muted thougts, upon distracted thoughts. I could point out the piercing eyes that betray the image of a carefree teenager, the near perfect rounded frame of cheeks and forehead, her strong but not overbearing chin with it's slight cleft in it...her hair shoved back behind one ear and almost past another. I can picture her face hidden within the crowd at the mall, in the bookstore, in the resteraunt, the nightclub...the music pounding distracting you from her just as her life has distracted her thoughts from the reality in the mirror.

These, however, are simple physical characterestics that say nothing of the person within. Even past the image we see in the mirror, the face we show the world...there are our thoughts, our ranting, our raving...Beauty comes from within more so than from without, (the oddest little quirks are all it requires oftentimes) although it is the outer circle we must cross to enter the inner. There is a great benefit to seeing the inside before the outside, as I had the fortune of doing here. She is not someone that I have met. She is not someone I have passed in the hallway, in my dreams, IRL in any way shape or form. Nor is she a person I shall ever meet, despite the shame of that. She is someone I know only from what she says, what she writes, what she decides to rant and rave about (and the occasional email that I've cherished--each and every one)...her problems, her ills, her disdain of dribble like this must surely seem...and that is simply her pain, her ills. The spark of joy that makes her eye twinkle, the barely upturned mouth of a smile which makes her entire face glow to me...this I could never really imagine from what I read. 27 years of pain is a lot to hide behind, a lot of material to cover in words. To read of her joy would be a shock, for here I see two ppl, one miserable and lonely and absorbed with only the darkness...while on the other side is a laughing, smiling, carefree soldier of life. I actually feel spared to have seen the inner pain b4 the picture. I think I would have a much heavier heart if the order had been reversed...

It is admiration and respect and a privelege to see her face. It is a privelage to have gone in this opposite journey from within to without. It is not in hopes of favor or recognition or respect or comfort or anything in mind flashes on these thoughts...simply a desire to tell, to discuss, to share with her and you my feelings. A side benefit it to enrichen my memory of the world and of my life and my later age to read some day...to remember this project of online journaling...who's to say how long this journal will last, how long my life will be this spectacle put on display...partly in vain, partly in lust for recognition, partly in hope...but mostly as an expirement in life, as another feather in my cap, as an expression of utter, frank, explicit honestly with both myself and the world that sees me, the world that harbors me, raises me, educates me.

This woman's mind is beautifull, despite the tarnishing it has been put through, despite the cynicism that crops up, the hopelessness, the utter depression. This mind is a conquering mind, a fighter's mind, a survivor's mind. This mind is a human mind with it's own unique inner workings, it's own thought patterns, it's own logic and conclusions that I find compelling enough to read the purgings of...to revel each day in a new entry, dark as an image that it paints.

And I'm not sure if it's proper to be devoting *my* journal to another person, but here I am, doing it this evening. Who gives a fuck what is proper anyway. I am simply human, and these thoughts the result of this picture.

I was quite honestly shocked when I saw her with eyes and not with my mind. I never really had an visual image of her from her self deemed "cheap ass therapy", it simply never came to mind...so it is, in a way, a surprise to find myself so moved by such a simple thing as a picture...but the surprise was there, nevertheless, for good or for ill a image is locked in my mind. A face to associate with the pain, and it adds new weight to the words, makes it more concrete. With newspaper print now, with details on revolts and murder and crime waved beneath my nose daily, it all is distant, shoved aside, hurled away, far from me and my concerns. That somone is being stabbed as I write this, that someone is being raped visciously as I write this...a man somewhere is being dumped by the woman of his dreams. A cat has just now been crushed underneath the wheels of some drunken teenager. But I can't see it, and I can't feel it. The world is too large a place to concern myself with every detail, and that can only lead to deeper cynicisam anyways, despite the fact that somewhere near me a concert is raging, a man is strumming his guitar in bliss, hoping he is the next jimi hendrix....a priest is taking his vows, two lovers are spending their first night in each other's arms. Is there enough light to overcome the dark? Is there enough good to right the wrong? Does anyone care?

The woman you see here in the background is beautiful, and it's about time I say so. Why I waited until I could judge with my eyes, I don't know, or rather, I do know...I'm a human just like all the other failed experiments in Creation...Yet, even had she revealed herself to be a hag, the beauty of her mind would still be worth this entry. The whole of her is...