on beauty

" "Isn't that beautiful out there!" I looked out, and she was right. Beautiful was indeed there. But I had seen Beautiful many times, and so I closed my eyes. I rejected the plastered idols of the Appearances. These idols I had been trained, along with everybody else, to see, and I was tired of their tyranny."
Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift.

this reminded me of a time my friend g and were driving somewhere in the midst of a beautiful autumn day, the colors sparkling all around us as if life was aflame. i said, "isn't that beautiful?" and she said, "yeah, it would make a great jigsaw puzzle."