Chalepa ta Kala.

In Hippias Major, Plato claims, "Chalepa ta kala." Beauty is difficult. Of all things Platonic and Socratic, this is a phrase that has stuck with me over the last year or so, turning up in my thoughts here and there. I am at the beginning of Eat, Pray, Love by E. Gilbert, a book passionately recommended to me by my friend Megan. In the Eat section, E. is in Italy, dedicating four months to the pleasure of eating and the Italian language. Her enjoyment, letting in of pleasure as Puritan-ethic raised American living in pleasurable Italy, has me thinking again about pleasure and beauty.

Plato is attempting to define beauty in Hippias Major - whether it is a personal experience or something inherent in an object. Thus, the difficulty. But there is more in this idea of beauty being difficult. I thought at one point that Plato meant beauty is difficult to find (I concluded that it's not, really) and further down the rabbit hole that beauty is difficult to experience. Chalepa can be translated "hard to bear, painful, sore, grievous." There is something threatening, perhaps, in a beautiful man. There is something disconcerting in a beautiful moment because we risk being undone, risk entering something beautiful to not too soon later run across something hideous. Beauty can seem ethereal and fleeting. Some things are so beautiful I cry. Perhaps, as E. discovers in Italy, we do not learn along with everything else in school and life how to experience, to bear, to be in the presence of beauty.

In my Internet search about Plato's quote, I found a book review of "The Uncertainty Principle of Beauty" claiming that for 20 centuries between Plato and Kant, the study of beauty was a signature concern of philosophy. Recently, however, beauty has largely been dropped from the philosophical curriculum." For Plato, unlike Kant who became increasingly mistrustful of passion, beauty was inseparable from eros. Not only did our collective concept of beauty lose passion, but our philosophy has lost a passion for beauty.

This brings me to last Friday. After work, I picked up the kids from Ms. Alisa's and headed up to Fort Collins to meet Michael and to see Amy and Scott Lowe and their kids, Davis and Ella. Taking the Lowe's exit from I-25 and driving along the frontage road in our rattling geriatric Volvo, we were hit by the glorious orange light of a fall evening. Five for Fighting's "Superman (It's Not Easy)" was playing from my newly restored iPod, and I was so easily reminded of a football awards show post-9/11 with this song playing in the background. I cried then for the seeming loss of American innocence. I smiled this last Friday about how many of us feel like inadequate but still flying heroes. I looked in my rearview mirror to see Harper looking out the window, endearing with her newly formed wispy Mohawk and apple pieces all over her face and chest. Not to be upstaged by anything, Asher continued his mono/dialogue with me. "Davis is a boy not a man." Pause. "I'm right!" Pause. "There's the mountains." And there they were - so clear on this evening, the folds and dives distinct even in the distance. God granted me stillness, a pause to feel the beauty of this moment surrounded by light, mountains, my children. In so many ways I felt like I was taking a battered and strengthened woman, a woman with renewed passions and vision for pleasure and beauty to my husband and close friends. It is fall, a time to pause for such things as the trees demand us with their color.

Like many things we learn and perspire for, I am beginning to think that experiencing beauty and pleasure - especially for many of us Americans who grew up with the Puritan work ethic - takes some working out. I have to be aware of this muscle and take moments to flex it. It also takes some redefining. Beauty is not necessarily in those things that cost money, contrary to POPular opinion. Beauty is an equal opportunity commodity (thank God because I just heard this morning that the top 1% of our country's richest people made 21% of the country's income last year). Beauty is an intrinsic part of God and his creation.

Preparing dinner last night for my family, sister and brother-in-law and Megan, I was chopping vegetables for a Greek salad. In my haste and also anticipation of cleaning up (efficiency, efficiency), I thought about putting the salad in an ugly plastic tub that I could easily seal with a lid. Inspired by "Eat, Pray, Love" to think about what would be beautiful and pleasurable, I pulled down a nicely shaped white bowl that Michael purchased when he moved into his apartment. The bowl was cool and fit nicely in my hands. I transferred the cucumbers and red tomatoes. The salad looked beautiful.