Meri's Musings

A community museum somewhere in the outskirts of the local area recently mounted an exhibition called "Suffer for Beauty." I didn't go see it because it just didn't fit into my schedule,  but it got me thinking about the ways that I have suffered  in the quest forbeauty on the outside, the place that seems to be of utmost importance in the American scheme of values. Maybe where you live, too. There are the obvious things, of course, like cramming my feet into high heels and teetering around town with feet that are screaming  and back that's trying to adjust its alignment and ankles threatening to twist just to stop the madness. I've also had abdominoplasty, a "tummy tuck", to pull my muscles back into alignment and cut out excessive skin and stretch what's left back together after repeated C-sections left my abdominal muscles a little lax. Hurt like hell (more than the C-sections) and the compression garments I had t...

I'm looking out the window, happy to be warm and dry as I watch the rain sheet down and wash away the fall color. I think back to the paintbox of reds and oranges and golds and yellows that decorated upstate New York and soaked us in a riot of color. "Communion" © 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian I remember a Saturday filled with color and kites and wind turbines, friendships formed over food and images, beautiful souls shining through their vessels. "Soaring" © 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian. "Harvesting Wind" © 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian I think of metaphors and shooting photos of a woman on a fence, "Kissed with Light" © 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian watching the light dance off the planes of her face, and wondering if she sees herself as beautiful like the camera sees her. "Wondering" © 2009 Meri Arnett-Kremian Probably not. It's easy for us to see the beauty around us. It's much harder to see the beauty within us, even when it lights up the...

Why is it so much easier for us to appreciate the patina of age when we see it right before our eyes than it is to fully celebrate the patina of age when it's looking back at us as our reflection in a mirror? What's your plan for becoming beautiful old ? And how do you define it?