Eastern Rosellas, a most beautiful bird
A pair have been visiting our Dogwoods for the seed a few times every day for the last two weeks.
Beauty nourishes a sense of interpenetration with the life of the total environment one is reacting to and which is reacting to you in turn. Elaine Scarry thinks we are too wary of the natural experience of beauty and its ‘intense somatic pleasure.’ ‘During this past 13 years I’ve been working on a big project about nuclear weapons . . . the more I work on that, the more it happens that I need to read poems. And work my garden. Beauty restores your trust in the world.’ (On Beauty and Being Just, Princeton University Press, 1998.)
