BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?

Subject: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 May 10 - 07:56 PM

I got to thinking about this last night - What is the MOST beautiful thing in the world? - and it took me awhile to come up with an answer that works for me.

Mind you, I know what devout fundamentalists (is there any other kind?) would say. I have an idea what the scientist would say. I have a pretty good idea of how the hedonist would respond.

My first inclination was to say "Love"- and I could still be persuaded in that direction. But my final answer: COLOR

But what say you?

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Janie
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:00 PM

light/shadow

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: JennieG
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:03 PM

Definitely colour! Rich emerald green......the golden colour of a deep yellow rose.....the clear blue of a cloudless sky, even the pale grey-green of winter-dry grass. I could go on for a long time.....

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: SINSULL
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:09 PM

Music

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:11 PM

That's what I was thinking, Jennie. I know black and white photography is artsy and all but add colo(u)r and it comes to life.

Light and shadow, Janie, aren't shabby either. I love the long shadows of late afternoon. Or in early morning when there is still that magical shimmer to the air.

But colour? Oh, yeah.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:15 PM

Well, yes, Sins. I couldn't argue with that. However, music in a dark world would not be a full answer. (Think 'The Road'. brrrrrr)

But if music had not been invented, the first time the world burst into color, voila! music was born.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ed T
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:27 PM

the sense of touch

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:33 PM

Marvelous and essential as it is, with the sense of touch comes the necessity of analysis, so I'd say it is not complete in itself.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Janie
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:40 PM

In truth, I pondered saying color. Then I thought about being in the woods or the garden at different times of day, the play of light and shadow, and what the quality or angle of light does to color, or what light at particular angle, and the attendant shadows do to bring out the beauty of bark on a tree - or of being mesmerized by the geometry of a white paneled door, opened against a white or light wall and the line of the shadow of the door on the wall in the light coming in from a window at certain times of day or year, or from a lamp placed just so....or of the crisp black shadow of ivy trailing from a pot cast against the white clapboard of the porch by the streetlight. Then I remembered that color is reflected light.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ed T
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:43 PM

To ananyse one has to think and reason.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Bobert
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:44 PM

Big bottomed Mudwomenz, by far!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:52 PM

Newborn kids.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ed T
Date: 18 May 10 - 10:03 PM

Sex with a big bottomed Mudwomenz

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Janie
Date: 18 May 10 - 10:04 PM

When I had that big Victorian cottage garden in Hillsborough, I loved going out into it at different times of day because it changed so much, depending on the light.

I don't think of well-done black and white photography as artsy. I think of it as stripping down the subject matter to what is essential or elemental - of helping the eye beyond the extraneous. There are some photographic subjects to which color is essential (gardens for instance!).

Thinking....some blind people can not perceive light. Some people are deaf and can't hear music. I have no doubt, though, that any human is able to experience something through at least one of their senses that they experience as the most beautiful thing in the world.

Ain't it grand, our diversity?

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ed T
Date: 18 May 10 - 10:08 PM

Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it. Confucius

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Bill D
Date: 18 May 10 - 10:25 PM

well... being a philosopher (of sorts)...my picky mind says 'color' and 'music' and 'love' are not the sort of nouns I'd call beautiful "things".

I see the virtues of all of those, but to pick one, I'd have to rephrase the question to something like "What is the most 'satisfying' or 'deeply meaningful'...or..."*shrug*
....and I'm sure folks who are partly or totally color-blind would have an opinion.

But is we're gonna have categories like color & music, I'd have to say something like 'wilderness' or 'nature', which can be appreciated by the blind or color-blind.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 May 10 - 12:19 AM

I agree with Bill D. The most satisfying, deeply meaningful experience I have had has been in wilderness and/or nature related.   But what I've been looking for in this question is a bare bones (big bottomed? ha) flat out image that is it.

I hadn't thought of blind or color blind people but I am sure they have opinions as to beauty in the world. And it may well be the sense of touch.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 19 May 10 - 05:02 AM

Kittens

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 19 May 10 - 05:44 AM

Bife de chorizo in Buenos Aires.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: SINSULL
Date: 19 May 10 - 09:38 AM

Music takes me away from reality. I get lost in it. Operas in particular. The music just rolls through me and I am taken away.


The ocean does the same to me although in a frightening way.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Donuel
Date: 19 May 10 - 10:40 AM

when you say color you speak of radiation and illumination.

Everything is composed of wave particle undulations and an interplay with everything else.

Everything in the Universe is illuminated or shines with some sort of "color" even if no being has the eyes to see that wavelength in the spectrum of everything.

There are some ""colors"" that you will never want to see such as gamma rays from a nearby quasar or a magnatar super nova.

Realizing that everything shines is amazing when you think about it.



The Hadron collider may one day show us the way to another dimension if the expected shining of a particular collision disappears from our sight/sensors. In this case the absense of something shining is also amazing.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Donuel
Date: 19 May 10 - 10:44 AM

please, no one mention dark matter or dark energy.
It undoubtedly shines in some kind of spectrum but no one yet knows what that spectrum is.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 May 10 - 10:45 AM

Sins, opera does the same to me, which is why I say that opera is my favorite music (especially duets); given my 'country' voice, I think that people find it odd. My preference, not my voice necessarily. :)

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: GUEST,mauvepink
Date: 19 May 10 - 12:11 PM

I can certainly relate to colour but never a single one. What makes colour beautiful, in my eyes, is the subtle mix that makes up a scene of anything. I have often gazed at valleys, sunsets, clouds, the sea... and wondered what intrinsically turns me on about a given natural view. Colour and it's relationship with other colours has be at least part of the answer.

What would be worse? Being blind or being deaf? I suspect most would think the latter as being better off but then I listen to opera a lot too... and fear what it would be like to not be able to listen to music. Let us hope none of us have to make the choice

No need to say what my favourite colours are. But operatic line?

"Pura siccome un angelo, Iddio mi dié una figlia" from Verdi's "La Traviata", Act II = God gave me an angel for a daughter. What colour she has given my life!

mp

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Emma B
Date: 19 May 10 - 12:34 PM

"Yet there's a keen sorrow comes o'er her at times,
As an Indian might feel in our northerly climes;
And she talks of the sunset, like parting of friends,
And the starlight, as love, that nor changes nor ends.

Ah! grieve not, sweet maiden, for star or for sun,
For the mountains that tower, or the rivers that run—
For beauty and grandeur, and glory, and light,
Are seen by the spirit, and not by the sight."

From the poem by THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS (1814–1845) Irish poet and journalist, set to the tune Maire Dhall (Blind Mary) by Turlough O'Carolan

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Bill D
Date: 19 May 10 - 12:35 PM

"The ocean does the same to me..."

Although I see the ocean only infrequently, I spent a few nice weekends north of Ocean City, MD in a cottage that looked right out on the ocean. I would sit, mesmerized, as it rolled in at all hours. I half expected someone to turn it off for the night. When I woke in the morning, with early light on it, there a strange sense of relief that it was still there.
I have several hundred jpegs for desktop/screensavers, and 90& of them are 'nature', with many, many lighthouses and ocean views. I'm not religious, as folks know...but the beauty & power of the ocean fills me with an awe that must be nearly the same as religion to many.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 May 10 - 12:40 PM

The sense of being is the most beautiful thing in the world, because all our other perceptions of beauty flow out of it.

Other than that, I'd say....

color
music/sound
form
the world of nature
and Liv Tyler (on a temporary basis at least)

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Becca72
Date: 19 May 10 - 12:42 PM

On my way to work yesterday I noticed that the sun was shining but there was just a touch of chill in the air along with an ever-so-slight smell of the ocean; a perfect morning. So my answer is Maine.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 May 10 - 12:52 PM

mauvepink, as to which is worse, blindness or deafness, studies say that deaf people report themselves as more isolated and lonelier than those who can't see. I haven't heard an explanation for it but my guess is that a blind person knows more of what is going on around him/her as well as at a reasonable distance. A deaf person, on the other hand, has no way of knowing the subject other than body language, whether the people in the vicinity are animated or in sorrow or serene.

When I said 'color', I do mean 'colors' and how they affect each other. Colors, tones, shades, luminosity, transparency and opaqueness, the colors of birds and insects and jewels, of skies and oceans and reflections, the colors and shadings of people's faces, spring colors, autumn colors, the colors of winter and of summer. A person could write a book about it, a person could (Hi KT!).

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 19 May 10 - 01:55 PM

I toyed with music and the whole what can be perceived by empirical sense and decided that Truth is the most beautiful thing in the world.

Truth can be had without sense. Truth can be known when you cannot see, hear, feel.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Gurney
Date: 19 May 10 - 04:43 PM

Mauvepink and Ebbie. The son of a friend of ours is deaf. His real social life is almost entirely with deaf friends of his, who form almost a separate society. When with hearing people, it is a little wearing on all parties. He misses so much interaction.
I have socialised with blind people, and found them much easier to be with, except that they have to be helped a little when in strange surroundings.
Entirely a subjective opinion.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: frogprince
Date: 19 May 10 - 04:48 PM

Seems to me that birth, and some related things, should be on the short list.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 19 May 10 - 05:18 PM

Beauty is in the ear of the behearer!!!----Art Thieme--1962

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Micca
Date: 19 May 10 - 05:27 PM

"Art is frozen Music" Goethe
I didnt know Goethe knew you and that you lived in Michigan!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 19 May 10 - 05:54 PM

My daughter, and my son, in the minutes after birth when they first met their father, and I realised what a miracle of perfect creation I was holding in my arms.

Nothing seen before or since has equalled the emotions of those two moments.

Nothing, IMO, ever will.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: gnu
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:20 PM

Baby.

But, since I have none...

That last hour before dark up in the bog country of Kent County on a fall eve when it's cold and the wind is none. All completely shuts down. All. Even the mice rustling through the leaves. Not so much as a whisper. So quiet that I have snapped my fingers gently by my ear to see if the deafening silence was real.

Then, the moonlit fall night that ensues with no wind... walking through the woods at midnight and wondering why all the animals are "taking the night off"... not up and aboutst feeding or mating... it's very puzzling. It's eerie.

Or, on the new moon, lying prone on the crest of a hill and looking at the clear sky to try to find a spot where there are no stars only to find it such a silly waste of time. But magical to witness.

Many others, but, I know a baby would be more beautiful than all of them because so many people say so. Mum included... and I trust her.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Lox
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:25 PM

Te most beautiful thing in this world is my daughter.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: kendall
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:30 PM

The human female bosom.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Lox
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:44 PM

Kendall,

I am now thinking about the human female bosom!!

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Eiseley
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:47 PM

For me, holding a brand new baby. But as that is rare, music comes a close second, especially Brahms Requiem or Bach's cello suites, or some transcendent moments in Beethoven's late quartets.

Eiseley

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 19 May 10 - 07:55 PM

There you go again, Kendall,
making a clean breast of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: gnu
Date: 19 May 10 - 09:21 PM

Kendall... no fair. That's a given.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 20 May 10 - 06:48 AM

Sorry. I'm just a sucker for boobs.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: frogprince
Date: 20 May 10 - 11:16 AM

I admire quite a few, but I'm really only a sucker for a couple of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 20 May 10 - 02:18 PM

To get serious for a minute, I don't think of love or children as "Things"

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 May 10 - 05:35 PM

I agree, Kendall. And much as I like many of the 'things' promulgated above, very few of them, if any, fit the thesis I set out. Which is OK- it's nice to hear all those good thoughts and visualize those images - but to my mind they enhance the richness of life, they aren't the core of life itself.

And perhaps color isn't either, but as I sit here in the home where I am housesitting I am surrounded on three sides by windows and with the glass door wide open, I look out upon a myriad of shades of spring green with here and there splashes of red and yellow and white and blue and purple; at my right are bird feeders and finches and song sparrows and wrens and hummingbirds dart hither and yon and the air is filled with their songs, it is impossible to imagine a world without color.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: gnu
Date: 20 May 10 - 06:08 PM

So, it's art, whether it be the natural world or that created by the artistic human.... colour, song, whatever... ??

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 20 May 10 - 07:50 PM

And all by the road side the wild birds fly,
Up out of the thistle and into the sky
Red birds, black birds they sing as they fly
Thank heaven for wild birds. (Jan Harmon)

The other day I stood and watched a yellow finch gathering dog hairs from the back door mat. She just kept on picking them up while I stood just a few feet away. Did she know I wouldn't harm her?

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: gnu
Date: 20 May 10 - 07:54 PM

Of course she did. It's your aura.

Subject: RE: BS: Most Beautiful Thing in the World?
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 May 10 - 09:56 PM

Or maybe it's the nature of a finch. :) Yesterday I stood on the back deck with a bird feeder literally within arm's reach. A finch landed on the feeder, eyed me for just a moment then set busily to work. Then came another and then another. I moved a couple of times; the first time they all eyed me for a moment then went back to their task. After that, they ignored me. I'll have to ask Ger and Sue upon their return if the finches have been tamed.