This is the most brilliant article of the day. Yes and Amen. It’s really long and the political worldview of the author seems, well–I would have said it was all about human nature rather than capitalism or socialism, but that’s not important. What’s important is that beauty should be one of the options on the table.
Suddenly spending a whole week driving up and down the highways and byways of Nairobi was so instructive, besides being a helpful jolt out of my wanderings in the tight circle of my own imaginations here in Binghamton, because it sharpened once more the knowledge of what I’ve always felt (something that a lot of people in America probably don’t experience very profoundly). And that’s the Inside Outside distinction.
Not to be unkind, but Nairobi isn’t exactly the most beautiful city you can visit. As you hurtle along down Ngong Road or wherever, the buildings on either side are not very much to look at. There’s an abundance of tin and concrete, of drab piles of junk or garbage, of little shacks, and then, of course, the miles huge Kibera Slum which you probably wouldn’t enjoy having to eke an existence out of. Nairobi is not like, say, Bamako which has an aesthetic coherence. Bamako is austere–the heat, the red dirt, the inescapable difficulty of life–but there is a symmetry about the architecture that I find wonderfully pleasing.
Still, whether Bamako or Nairobi or anywhere really hot, the Inside Outside contrast is essential to surviving life. Outside the noise, the bustle, the sweat, the buses and mopeds and din and exhaustion swirl together. You have the sensation of beating your way through the air, of just trying to come out on the other side alive. You have to have your wits in hand and your hand on your purse and your feet carefully treading the narrow way between potholes and whatever it is you might really not want to step in. Incidentally, this is why every single African is more intelligent than every single American. Because being Outside requires that you have a brain in your head.
Then you go Inside. And it’s as though you’ve entered another world entire. The noise is left sharply at the door. The heat dissipates and rolls away. Tranquility and deep peace descend. This is true whether entering the cool, smooth halled elegant mansions of the great, or when veering off the dusty main path into a rough, mud walled courtyard. It is suddenly quieter, and you go into the shade and sit and sip a cold drink.
Experiencing this basic fact of life again, so suddenly, allowed me to put my finger on one of the elements that is hard about life here. There isn’t really a distinction between the life out there and the life inside. What you get driving around in your car is exactly what you get walking into Walmart. Which wouldn’t be bad if you just never went to Walmart. But Walmart is every store, and, tragically, many other kinds of places too, including the Parish Hall of my church. The lighting is the same, once I bring my kids the noise is the same, and the shape is certainly the same–there is no tranquil deep peace to greet me when I come in.
My old beautiful house is the notable exception that proves this rule.
Americans solve this lack of distinction by lyrically eulogizing the outdoors. Nature is what’s needed. One must go there for the beauty craved by the human spirit. But most of us don’t have time. And sometimes it’s hard to get there. And it’s not often enough to make a real difference to one’s psychic health. Going in from the outside should be an essential element of the day’s rhythms. It should be something that happens over and over and over again.
And really, how tragic that many of us retreat into another place often devoid of real beauty–a Facebook or twitter feed, which aesthetically, for me anyway, leaves me feeling like I’ve just trucked the length of Walmart. We blur public with private, inside with outside. We make them all the same, and it’s a wearying to the flesh.
Anyway, here’s that line I was looking for. It’s from West with the Night, which is a beautiful book and you should read it. “There were drinks, but beyond that there was a tea table lavishly spread, as only the English can spread them. I have sometimes thought since of the Elkingtons’ tea table–round, capacious, and white, standing with sturdy legs against the green vines of the garden, a thousand miles of Africa receding from its edge.” p. 54
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