I just finished reading a book of essays on Venice by Joseph Brodsky, who won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1987. Venice is a city that I've always wanted to visit, if I ever get married again I'm determined to honeymoon there, and I was keen to find out what he had to say about it.

One of his essays is about the autonomy of the eye. Brodsky suggests that the eye is "the most autonomous of our organs ... the eye keeps registering reality even when there is no apparent reason for doing this ... Why? ... because the environment is hostile and eyesight is the instrument of adjustment to an environment which remains hostile no matter how well you have adjusted to it."

It's an interesting way to look at the function of your eye, but I wonder if it's true. Brodsky then goes onto say that "the eye has an appetite for beauty and art because it's looking for safety ... beauty is solace, since beauty is safe ... when the eye fails to find beauty -- alias solace -- it commands the body to create it, or, failing that, adjusts itself to percieve virtue in ugliness".

Brodsky's essay on beauty made me think about this book I read by Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, a book from the point of view of one of Cinderella's ugly stepsisters. I wonder what it's like to be ugly. I mean, not that I think I'm that beautiful, but too many men's and women's appreciative glances over the years have told me that I'm not ugly either. God, what is it like to not have people look at you with appreciation in their eyes. That must be such a trip.

If people have thought me ugly, it's only been a few. I'm not a knock out anything, I'm cute, maybe even pretty sometimes, but definitely not ugly. And if Brodsky is right that the eyes seek out beauty, does this mean that ugly people aren't sought out by people's eyes?

I had a roommate in college, who was a total math genius, but not very pretty. She wasn't ugly really, just kind of big and homel. She told me once, while I was complainng about my life, that I should feel lucky because I never had to work at having men notice me. Not that having men notice me has added anything significant to my life, but I'm sure I would have a differen opinion if men didn't notice me.

And beauty is such a fleeting thing to me anyway. Something or someone can appear beautiful depending on my mood, my emotional state, what side of the bed I got up on, how much or how little sleep I had that night and in a bar, how much I've had to drink. And my own standards for male beauty are so different than most women. All the men that the media and Hollywood tell me I'm supposed to panting over, just aren't that attractive to me.

I've had saved for years a Far Side comic where this monster guy is coming through a door on one side. On the other side, are a bunch of women. All of the women have the thought of 'Ugly' in their head except for one, she has heart in her head. The caption of the comic says 'Someone for Everyone'. I wrote my name on the woman with the heart because that's me.

Sometimes when I see a really great looking guy, say in like a seminar, I don't even talk to him, especially when I noticed that every woman in the room has made some excuse to talk to him. God, with that kind of competition who needs the stress, so I just avoid those popular types altogether and don't even bother to talk to them. Most of the time, these hoties guys are so arrogant and jerkish anyway, because they know they can just walk into a room and have the choice of any woman in it.

Of course, there's always an exception. I saw a guy like that in a seminar I was taking and I was dying to talk to him, because the man was just drop dead gorgeous. But I wasn't the only one who noticed the guy's beauty, because I saw him get hit on by every woman in the room except me. I was bummed to because this guy was exceptionally fine, but it was way to stressful, so I drove thoughts of him out of my mind.

Much to my surprise, while I was attending a one day seminar given by the same company who ran the other seminar we were both in, Mr Drop Dead Gorgeous ends up sitting next to me. It freaked me out so much because I'd been dying to talk to him for week and there he was, a breath away.

He turned out be such a nice guy and we actually became quite good friends after that. He turned out to not really my type but he was so cute. If we were back in the south and that holiday, Sadie Hawkins Day, came up where you could ask a guy to marry you, I'd ask this guy. Nice, sweet, smart and cute, what a dynamite combo! Plus, he was always tanned and I'm very partial to a man with a tan. Never mind, that he's not my type, I'm very flexible when it comes to pretty men.

I wonder what that guy is doing now. He spent some part of the year as a ski instructor/bum and I got the distinct impression that financially, he was well taken care of. We lost touch a few years ago, but I often think of him since he seemed so damned perfect to me. Talk about beauty. I know I would never grow tired looking at that guy's mug through the years.