The sky is so blue here. Depths of untouched colour, so rich that if you kept your heard tilted to face the heavens forever, you would go blind with all the cerulan beauty and shining purity of the sun. As I bent down yesterday, feeling rough stems of crabgrass intertwine themselves with my fingers, and the moist softness of peat moss harden underneath the beating rays of the sun, I caught sight of that sky. I felt life flow through my veins. There's a peculiar sort of earthy loveliness to nature here. It's not pale and etheral-- oh, no, it's an honest beauty, the kind they paint in children's stories. I danced through the jeweled drops of water when the yard looked a suburban perfection. I could feel the whisper of grass beneath my feet as they turned in half-remembered ballet moves. And when I climbed a tree, my fingers scrabbling against harsh bark and the glossy beads of amber, I looked through the leaves. They were glowing, faintly translucent, in the white light. I looked up at that sky and wondered what would happen if I just slipped away into that beauty. For a brief moment, I felt my heartbeat spiral away into silence, still beating, just not troubling me with its presence.

Afterwards, I lay on my parents' bed, watching the fan turn round and whispering lines of quoted poetry from my mouth. And then, for no accountable reason, this wave of sadness came over me. It pressed down on me, sinking me deeper into the fine lines of coverlet and sheets until I couldn't move. I cried and cried until I lay, spent and exhausted on my floor, the blanket tangled around my limbs. Yet I wasn't satisfied. There's a certain self-indulgence in outpouring of grief, and I didn't need that. It was so furtive and lonely. I wanted to be held and comforted, to feel my hair smoothed by a hand, pressing warmth against my skin. But it was 11 at night, and I'm not sure I could have explained it to anyone right anyway, so I just turned on Nora and watched the comedy of human tragedy with blank eyes.

I'm a child of beauty. Ugliness is unsettling, eats away at my soul. I want to change the world so it's a sacred bower of light and life. I see beauty in so many things. It's a gift that I'm slowly discovering. In glittering gems burning in the fireplace, and laden breezes brushing through translucent leaves, rippling through the otherwise stagnant summer air. The odd thing, of course, is that my physical appearance is not particularly beautiful. There are elements of the lovely about me-- my thick, golden-brown hair that's touched with auburn waves, my eyes, so dark that sometimes they appear black when they snap angrily at people. I'm letting my hair grow untouched so I can weave it in heavy braids around my head, or wear it up in Edwardian coils. But my face and figure is but average, and it's hard to accept that sometimes.

I love Amy Lowell's poetry-- Patterns, The Letter, Fire and Ice-- and I remember one day I was idly flipping through the pages of my English textbook and saw a photograph of her. Her ordinary face, framed only by lovely hair, sent a cold shock of disappointment through me. Someone who wrote as beautifully as she did should have been the most exquisite creature, all pale and slender, like a lily of the valley. L.M. Montgomery knew something about the danger of imagination. When Anne says "that's not my idea of a diamond," having created this gorgeous lavendar jewel of splendor in her mind, we can't help but feel kindred to that sentiment. There's something tireless about our fantasies. Perhaps that's why we hold the idea of heaven in such high esteem. "Other worlds. It has to be more than we can imagine." More than even I can imagine.

As for more prosy matters, I went to the video store today and rented Life As A House (Hayden Christensen, Kevin Kline) and Nora (Ewan McGregor). I've been desperately pining after both those movies, and watched Life As A House today. It was fantastic-- dark, edgy, and contained a message of redemption that transcended that sometimes sentimental moments. Hayden Christensen has established himself in my mind as both an amazing actor and an absolutely beautiful person. He is really quite fantastic looking-- and his voice is gorgeous. It's almost up there with Alan Rickman's velvety words. Speaking of beauty. . . well, I might as well leave off, seeing as how my sister wants the laptop, and this topic would eventually have to crumble into a wordless admiration of Hayden Christensen. I'm such a dork. But a poetic one.