What is beauty?

I’ve been reading Behrooz Ghamari’s book “The Long War on Iran” where I came across a passage that got me to thinking about beauty.

“Legend has it,” Ghamari wrote, “that in 1972, when Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was asked about the impact of the French Revolution, he replied that ‘it’s too soon to say.’”

I put the book down to ponder the French Revolution… Lafayette’s allies storming the Bastille in the name of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Such beautiful words, beautiful ideas, so beautiful. The 19^th century French writer Stendahl wrote that beauty is the promise of happiness.

When I was an over-the-road trucker, people would ask me what I thought was the most beautiful place, or thing I’d seen during my travels to everywhere on the highways of American road lore.

I had seen o’ beautiful for spacious skies and amber waves of grain; the Columbia River Gorge; the sun going behind snow-capped mountain peaks; the foam of an ocean crashing up against the Oregon coast.

“An old, rusted trash barrel,” I’d say.

“A trash barrel?”

“Yeah, a trash barrel. It looked like it had once been a 55-gallon oil drum with an axle and wheels bolted to its bottom and handles welded to its side. It was set out on the curb of a Main Street in a small town waiting for the garbage truck to arrive in the morning to take its contents away.”

It was around 2 a.m. when I saw it ­— the trash barrel.

I was hauling 20 tons of dog food from southern Georgia going to a Pet-Smart warehouse in Salt Lake City when it caught my eye.

I had four days to get to Utah, so I was in no big hurry. I liked to sleep during the day and drive at night when traffic was light and I could exit the Interstate to take two-lane backroads through peopled towns without losing too much time.

I was somewhere in southern Mississippi. The black sky was sprinkled with specks of light, the moon a silvery sliver. The mighty Detroit diesel engine beneath the hood of my truck purred like a kitten. Headlights pointed the way. Keep it between the lines and everything will be all right.

Passing through a swampy area, I saw ghosts. A man and a woman were fleeing from their lives as slaves to the owner of the local plantation, up to their knees in the mucky waters of the swamp where it would be hard for the dogs to pick up their scent.

It was unnerving. I shook my head. I don’t believe in ghosts, at least not the kind you see in movies.

A few miles further on up the road I came to a small town. At the edge of town was a Colonial-style mansion, like something out of Gone with the Wind, where apparently once upon a time the owners of the slaves had lived.

It was a museum now.

Main Street was maybe five blocks long, a streetlight, a bank, a pawn shop, a café/pool hall/bus depot, things like that. 2 a.m. Nobody around. Not a single one. Not even a cop. The town was empty, motionless… there was only me, like when a character in a post-apocalyptic scene from the Twilight Zone first realizes that he’s the only one left. Only me in a universe that keeps expanding, making me smaller until I’m less than a point… creating it all. Alone. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to listen.

First ghosts and now this… a feeling of utter aloneness. I could feel a tightening in my chest. A quickening of breath. Like a paranoia like the first time I smoked a joint and suddenly realized that I was alone in a crowded room.

That’s when I noticed the trash barrel set out next to the curb and I could release my breath. Others would be coming to empty it in the morning.  I wasn’t alone. Damned if it wasn’t the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.