Solstice

I have been thinking about beauty this morning, because it is the official Summer Solstice and there is so much abundant free-floating natural gorgeous out there these days. My lord, New England has been showing off of late.

I am not just thinking about the beauty of a spider web shining in the sun, or fresh cherries, or clouds so full of rain they are busting. ( Cloudburst, by the way is an amazing word.) Because holy mackerel, have you seen the people out there these days? I feel like I keep getting sideswiped by long legs and ponytails and tight t-shirts. This morning at the bakery the girl behind the counter had a jewel just floating about four inches above her cleavage. She was stunning.

Earlier this week I was talking to a friend about this particular kind of beauty, which women are so good at employing. Because the jewel was objectively beautiful, as was the girl, and together it was just amazing, but also I felt a tug of manipulation, or something, because of the sexiness. And this is what I've been chewing on. Is beauty all about sex? 

This is a thought that is sometimes more comfortable than other times. It depends on how I  defining sex. If I  am defining sex as penis in vagina, then yech. Back away, no thank you.  But if I think of sex as abundance, as magic, as juicy backbone, then ok. 

Which brings me back to beauty, and how we are always worrying about being beautiful, and how to be more beautiful, and who is more beautiful than us. My friend was stressed out because someone she wanted to have sex with was being hunted by another woman, who was younger, and also a burlesque dancer. The burlesque dancer was reputed to be very comfortable nude, which makes sense given her profession. Ok, so when my friend told me about her concerns my immediate thought was that nude does not guarantee seduction, and who cares? But the unrecognized thought was that it wasn't really about nudity or whatever, it was about my friend's feelings of not being beautiful enough, of not being chosen, of there not  being enough loving to go around.

I am not sure how this is going to play out for me, but I think it has some strong correlation to why women are mean to each other. So how do we get to a point of recognizing the amazing abundance of beauty? And how one beautiful thing only adds to our own beauty? And see that in each other? Or is that horrifically naive? 

And sex. Hmmm. And sex.  While I am typing this, two dragonflies are getting it on by my foot. The solstice used to at least be in part about getting laid. The dragonflies certainly seem to be enjoying themselves. Perhaps I will put aside the larger questions, however tempting such cerebrality might be and attempt to simply soak in the longest day.