City of Legends

There was a study done a few years ago that said the main difference between merely pretty (which seems to be the average of all standard facial features one is exposed to within their culture) and beautiful was not a higher order of perfection but a slight lack of symmetry.

Those people we define in our various cultures as most beautiful are not those who achieve flawless symmetry through genetics and exercise and regular injections of nerve paralyzing agents derived from rotting food, those we see as merely “pretty” (and occasionally “grotesque”). Beautiful starts from pretty and then, with a few small things moved out of symmetry to create a noticeable ripple barely perceived, in the awareness of the viewer, it steps out of the crowd. In other words, they stand out, they are “striking”.

We don’t like boring people. Boring people may blend in well, but they don’t “Wow” us like we want to be wowed. Think of Ellen Barkin in “Sea of Love” snapping her fingers to communicate the need for the “zap” of instant attraction. The thunderbolt. What we don’t notice on at least a preconscious level we cannot be seduced by or drawn to.

And it isn’t just on the physical side. I know when I first felt a tug towards my partner and friend, my lover, Candy, I started reading everything I could find that she had written (good thing she is a writer, and a good one). It wasn’t poems or articles about pristine fields of daisies that set the tuning forks of my soul humming, it was the pieces about pain, loss, rejection, fear, anger, betrayal, loneliness and determination, even her love of caffeine. The “little things” that really aren’t so little but expose the bare skin under the cosmetic of everyday conversation. Just like the right flaw in the heart of a diamond sets up the gem to bend the light in new and exciting ways, so was I caught by the refraction of the pale white light of everyday life.

Grey became red and blue and gold and green and colours I’d never seem and as of yet still do not have words for. It was…*snap*…the thunderbolt.

We like our heroes and our lovers to be human, to be real, to have the little picks and flaws that make them all the more precious to us. As beauty is everyday elevated by the right nuance of imperfection, a “perfect fit” in love comes from mutual and complementary imperfections, that is where the attraction and the excitement come from. On some levels we are very different people, and that is intriguing and exciting.