“Beauty is provocative in part because it compels reply. Some of the fingers on the hands of our capacity to reply are more compelling than others in relation with our purposes and character, our histories, ideas, feelings and goals.

But beauty provokes reply. Some, experiencing beauty, become beautiful themselves. This magnifies the beauty, and extends it. Others are triggered. Some to attack, some to dominate, some to penetrate. Some will feel the necessity of possessing the object of their attentions.

Some will hate beauty, in part because they cannot find their own within and in relationships.

Some will kill. The beauty that is the root of some persons may have been injured, denied, assaulted or violated. Sometimes this makes scars that harden over time.

Others are terrified by beauty, for they are confused about their relationships with it — whether theirs can be expressed or recognized — even within themselves. Divine beauty is innately terrifying, for reasons which do not fit well in language. But this is rarely experienced in mortal lives.

As regards beauty, the visual easily dominates many of us much of the time. And it is real, yet can be shallow, because it is of form rather than spirit and relationships. Yet, again, the participant’s choices determine the time and way of the dance that emerges. This is part of their contribution to the song of relation with beauty. But all of this actually happens in another place.

A place that can become a celebration — but may become war.

And so, you see, beauty… is provocative.”

— an anonymous informant