What a phrase!
Normally only meriting a snicker as the testosterone riddled youths point toward the girl who hath fallen bodily and impendingly from the ‘ugly tree’, hitting all of the branches on the way down… not to mention knocking herself out with a good nutting of the trunk on terrestrial impact.
But no, this is not of what I speak. I think this phrase needs a more positive spin. Take the beautiful girl – more often than not, amazing beauty can indicate amazing lack of faculty. But frankly, and I believe I speak for many in saying this, there is a certain level of beauty that is just right for a man. A little less and the lady may not be appealing; a little more and the possibility of having a thought more structured than that of a pidgeon in the instant of copulation becomes unlikely. I don’t wish to say that this is it, done and dusted, or that this ‘certain level’ is set in stone. Far from it…
What I am getting at, in a manner that is increasingly circular and possibly more irritating, is that that ancient phrase can be so wrong. Every so often one can find oneself in deep conversation. Then you realise it… it hits you round the face like a giant iced haddock. You not only are interested and enjoying yourself – lost in a moment, buried in thought – but in fact you realise that you are attracted to the girl with which you are speaking. This is not some attraction solely created through the workings of the testes, but is something more: an entire cranial throbbing of delta waves hitting some kind of harmonic. And in that moment, the mild attraction can somehow take on a totally new dimension. The promise of partnership in a life which in reality is fundamentally solitary… Descartes was certainly not barking up the ugly tree all those years ago.
And so to my conclusion. There is more to beauty than skin. It helps, but I certainly wouldn’t say beauty is only so deep – it reaches far deeper: savour those moments and you are taunting Descartes, my dear boloists!