Contrast
It stood before me creepy, huge and tall; I heard many stories about ghosts, and they remained for me nothing more than stories told but this time the ghost was real, it wasn’t an invisible shadow it was real 7 to 8 meters tall and carbonized from ground till its highest branch.
A beautiful pine tree, that’s how once it was but now it’s just a lifeless black ghost. The wind passes through it and nothing happens; there’s no movement in its needle leaves, no friction, no smooth sound, no beautiful pine scent to overwhelm the air and make it so adorable to breath. What remains is the black corpse with the ugly nauseous burning smell.
It is weird how that same smell used to be very nice; it was the inseparable companion of a lot of laughs and too many unforgettable moments around camp fire. Now that nice smell is nauseous and ugly, a fingerprint of the hideous destructive force that took a whole pine forest away. Anyway it’s not the first time, I've seen similar kinds of metamorphosis happening in other things before;beautiful things can suddenly become ugly, it seems that it’s a hidden character in them.
A beautiful pine tree, that’s how once it was but now it’s just a lifeless black ghost. The wind passes through it and nothing happens; there’s no movement in its needle leaves, no friction, no smooth sound, no beautiful pine scent to overwhelm the air and make it so adorable to breath. What remains is the black corpse with the ugly nauseous burning smell.
It is weird how that same smell used to be very nice; it was the inseparable companion of a lot of laughs and too many unforgettable moments around camp fire. Now that nice smell is nauseous and ugly, a fingerprint of the hideous destructive force that took a whole pine forest away. Anyway it’s not the first time, I've seen similar kinds of metamorphosis happening in other things before;
Comments
Well, I know this is going to sound so cliche and I am sure you've heard this a million times, but this is life. Life is a set of contrasts put together in one package. But the point here is not the idea of the contrast, it's the message conveyed in this contrast, in this sudden change. This tree stands as a testimony to many philosophical ideas and moments we encounter. It not just represents the beautiful and ugly, it also represents the tangible and intangible, the happy and the sad, life and death, existence and non-existence, and so on.
You have elaborated beautifully on what I wrote and your comment completes my post. The tree stands for all what you have said, but I was more interested in the contrast of the smell not the tree, it is different from the tree that was alive and now dead, or was green and now black which extends to all the things that you’ve mentioned. Those things like life and death, happiness and sadness, existence and nonexistence they happen as a couple, a dipole, a yin yang. But the thing in the smell is that it is one single thing that is still the same it didn’t change it wasn’t green and turned to black it wasn’t alive and now dead it is still the same smell of burning pine wood but that same smell generated two absolutely opposing feelings and impressions.
So things that were a solid concept of beauty those same things became a solid concept of ugliness without any change in their inherent nature or in what they are, that’s my point here this type of change of concepts that can happen to beautiful things and it goes most of the time in the direction from beauty to ugliness (and I’m talking about things and impressions here not anything else) never from ugliness to beauty; ugly things remain ugly. But I guess it all goes down to what you said as this is life.
thanks for your kind words. Well, I am going to say something else that will sound so cliche and so Marxist of me, but I don't really believe that anyone or anything is ugly. I find everything beautiful and I find that beauty is inherent in everything (excluding wars, deaths, murders, etc). But I mean the idea of ugly and beautiful is very subjective so you or someone else would have a different opinion and that's okay. I always say that it is healthy to have so many different views, opinions and contrasts. Otherwise, the world we live in would be too banal. But, I really find everyone beautiful; sometimes, it may be hard to catch or see, but if you look a little bit deeper, you'll find it.
I too find everyone beautiful, if u read my last comment u'll see that I said I'm talking about impressions and things only. But I can't agree that anything is beautiful and your list of exceptions is the proof and it's too long. I totally agree with you about subjectivity and that's why I said "impressions".
Ella,
hehe, this ghost thing is really working!
I think you're right it's just the human touch. But believe me that burnt pine forest is really ugly, you have just to stand in it and see for yourself, a total overwhelming disaster. Those trees are more than 100 years old some of them were planted by my grand grand father, so it's heart braking.
Anyway PL, Ella, I think taking the situation that I spoke about and generalizing it to say that beauty has a hidden character in it to turn to something ugly is inaccurate and exaggerated. Even though it happened on multiple occasions but to generalize in that way is very simplistic and it is not something correct or rational to do.
Thank you both for the beautiful discussion. :)