Our Town: The awesome power of beauty

Everyone craves that which is beautiful. 
Walk down any Main Street and you’ll see an abundance of beauty salons where women of all ages are busy having their nails, skin and hair tended to for hours.  
Or go visit the Americana Manhasset Mall and check out  the dresses, sweaters, coats, bags and boots. 
They’re  beautiful enough to make you cry.  
Or go to the local gym and you will note lots of people running on the tread mill in an effort to firm up their butts, or rid themselves of that ugly pot belly in order to look better. 
Most think beauty is the exclusive domain of the feminine, however men are equally obsessed with aesthetics — but loathe to admit it.  
Men love their Bentley’s, Mercedes and BMW’s because they handle so well but because they look so good.  
Men take all those golf lessons and tennis lessons to hone a more beautiful swing.  
Men will spend small fortunes to join country clubs in order to avail themselves of the beauty of the golf courses. 
And they will spend large fortunes in order to buy a pretty home on a pretty block. 
Nearly every great piece of literature is an homage to beauty. 
Dulcinea is at the center of the novel Don Quixote.  
Fantine and Cosette, at the heart of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserable” and “The Great Gatsby,” makes no sense at all without the grace and beauty of Daisy Buchanan.  
In architecture every great city holds a special place that symbolizes breathtaking beauty. 
Paris has the Eiffel Tower, London has the London Eye and Rome has the Trevi Fountain. 
People will travel many thousands of miles in order to gaze upon the beautiful. 
Beauty is the hidden muse that moves the world.  
Freud told us that sex was the ultimate prime mover but I think that beauty is the true holy grail.   
Don Quixote spent his dying days acting the hero in order to impress his muse. 
Jay Gatsby built his empire in order to win back Daisy.    
The handsome young prince risked his life in order to find sleeping beauty and to kiss her lips. 
Great works teach us something about the relationship between heroism and beauty.   
It is only the true hero that wins the great beauty.  
Only the strongest knight gains the hand of the beautiful princess. 
Without beauty in the world we would have no heroics.
Why risk it all if there is no golden prize at the end.  
Heroism entails stress and strain, blood, sweat and tears and only the strongest and the bravest get the pot at the end of the rainbow. 
And that pot is filled with  gold which we then use to buy beauty.    
Beauty cost money. 
So when I see all those women going into all those nail salons to become coiffed and perfumed  
I had better understand that  they are there in an effort to remain as someone’s special muse. 
They are there in the hope that their husband or boyfriend will gaze upon their beauty and be inspired enough to become her hero — the guy who is steadfast and strong. 
I think everyone one of us is continually involved in this romantic battle.
In 1956, E.B. White wrote “The Ring of Time,” an exquisite and profound essay on beauty and aging.  
He was at the Ringling Brothers winter quarters in Sarasota, Florida and in the essay he described the causal confident beauty of a 16-year-old circus performer as she practiced riding a circus horse around the ring. 
In the center of the ring was her mother who held the horse on a tether as it rode about the ring.  
White talked of the beauty of youth but that time does take it away from us. 
There is awesome power in beauty. 
The quest for beauty destroyed Tiger Woods public persona just as it destroyed Bill Clinton’s presidency.  
Marilyn Monroe was too much of a beauty for our greatest athlete Joe DiMaggio — but also our greatest playwright Arthur Miller.  
Herman Melville was probably thinking of some great beauty when he created the allegory of “Moby Dick.” 
The last line of “King Kong” pertains to this as well.  
The great king Kong lies dead in the street next to the Empire State Building.  
A policemen remark “It looks like the airplanes finally got Kong.”   
The reporter who stands next to him says, “no, it wasn’t the airplanes — it was beauty that killed the beast.”