An Economy of Beauty Explained

In an anthology written by 20-somethings, one author Jess Lachler wrote an essay entitled "California", about a woman from Ohio (well, herself really), who graduates from College, ends up in California where her depression disappears, she takes long healthy walks, drinks in sunshine, becomes tan, blond...then one days starts to only watch TV and cries all night long. It is beautiful every day. Everything is too easy for her. Her depression is gone. She is empty. She decides at the end to travel to New York City, cold gray dank dark lovely ugly NYC, where her monster grows inside her, she is struggling, but feels better than when she was in California.

She explained the weather in East coast (and midwest I suppose) as an "economy of beauty". And I sat up in bed, light still on, and wrote it in my journal write away. Yes. An economy of beauty. Right now it is cold. The sun is golden. The coulds are heavey. On the east coast. I imagine walking across the Mass Ave bridge, sun in my eyes, highlighting the tall skyscrapers on one side of the harbour, the green manicured lollipop trees and more recent buildings of MIT. I also see ghosts. Of so many people I have known inbetween this bridge.

I have always been drawn to bridges. I remember taking so much small delight in the small bridge in the park in Park Drive, that showed the Prudential framed perfectly by water and trees. About eight steps really length of a bridge. But I paused every time I walked on it. Every time.

I feel here in Arizona there is a different type of economy of beauty. I will never get used to the expansive space. The lack of stairs. The lack of real greenery. Arizona is a state that is dead, from the lack of a sea. It is tragic, dusty, yellow, beige, not lush or rustic at all. Crass, ugly with its endless orange strip malls. Brick buildings, too recent. Garish neon hotel signs, one of a diver plummeting to the street, is one I admire.

The weather is always lovely-sometimes so hot my skin pickles pink within minutes of going outside. But most of the time, I inhale deeply as i ride my bike, the cool breeze, the brightness of the sun. Sometimes in the east coast, it is so humid you feel as though you are in an oven, trapped in like a bad faery tale. Here it drier than skin flaked onto your pillow, you feel lizards scraping you, your skin parches, segmenting in a square pore landscape of saltiness. No sweat.

But looking at your window, in your car, there is hardly beauty. Hardly anything to see. No trees most of the time.

The trick is not to be weighed down by the weather. Being from the east coast, I wonder, does one feel odd about such good weather? So cheated most of life? But I think of lush parks and beaches and real lakes and ponds an canals. I dream of water constantly. I dream of rain. I dream of chapstick to help with dry lips. I dream a lot now I am here. I do not know if it is the dead sea that causes endless dreams, but I am starting to suspect it may be.