To the Girl in White at the Keystone Mall
She’s wearing a long white puffer coat, white jeans, and chunky white boots offset by freshly colored, bright red hair. She is the overdressed protagonist of her own story with the kind of grommeted, black leather, Hot Topic accessories that do my ‘90s heart good. Not that I have time to take this all in. She has just materialized from behind a corner in what is nearly a rom-com collision. As we pass, my inner monologue is an effusive, Craig Ferguson love bomb: “You look sensational! That outfit is ON POINT!” But I keep it to myself and continue walking.
Force of habit. The self-preservation instinct from years of social awkwardness and the incessant mental replays of bad performances. Better to strategize than improvise, to stay silent than say what has not yet passed inspection.
I feel bad, of course. I always feel bad having a fully-formed, undelivered complement on my hands. It is this Catholic guilt that compels me to return to the Keystone Mall later that day, wearing a “Free Compliments” shirt, intent on widespread distribution. Not as penance – a thousand blessings upon the heads of others can not atone for the failure to touch someone else.
I don’t believe in penance, but I do believe in Fate. What happens tends to be that which needed to happen, in the cosmic sense. While not absolving me of responsibility, Fate does help with the regret. Maybe this missed opportunity had nothing to do with the Vision in White, but rather was meant to serve as a motivator for blessing others. The universe is therefore not hurt by my incompetence, and balance is restored to the Force.
Pardon me, while I have a strange interlude.
While scouting the best location for my Free Compliment ambush, I take the opportunity to walk by a jewelry store, wherein works a sales associate bearing a passing resemblance to Dakota Johnson and on whom I have been crushing for months.
Yes, I know – here’s someone who sees one girl, is inspired to make a return pilgrimage where he sees another, talks to neither, and cries in his pretzels about both.
Is this the archetypal simp? Or something else?
It’s not that I’m girl crazy (though I am), or that I have the emotional attention span of a goldfish (though I do). It’s that my imagination is captivated by beauty. Beauty shatters the complacency of routine. I’m going about my day wrapped up in my own affairs when suddenly I am interrupted by a face, a melody, a landscape. The small horizons of my self-interest collapse like a house of cards. Dreamscapes effortlessly unfold, poetry bursts forth, inspiration, motivation, temptation, revelation. Beauty is an overwhelming force, baked into our mythology and humanity – it was the battleground over which the Trojan War was waged. It is the muse of every good artist and the mistress of every great one. Dostoevsky said, “Beauty will save the world.” It is the altar at which I worship even when I don’t intellectually know why.
Either that, or it is quite possible that…
This may be little more than an elaborate mind game – a way to trick myself into doing what I know I should and not feel bad when I don’t. Self-manipulation and rationalization. All these thoughts about thoughts, these perspectives and mental gymnastics may serve no greater purpose than the actions they inspire. I doubt it matters what I think so much as what I do.
But even when I think incorrectly, do the wrong things, or don’t do the right ones, even when my motivations are mixed and my moral compass skewed, there is grace. Grace is Fate causing things to turn out the way they should. Grace is Beauty interrupting our lives. Grace is a girl in white at the Keystone Mall.
J.
Jan. 30, 2024