Dear DOMAI,

I love reading your newsletter! It's uplifting to hear about others' encounters with Beauty, and how the experiences have stuck with them over whole lifetimes.

I have one such experience to share. It is the story of the first time I saw Beauty face-to-face.

One summer when I was 15, my parents gave in to my begging and bothering them, and allowed me to spend a few weeks with a friend of mine whose family lived on a farm. I was a "city boy" and didn't know a cow from a steer (still don't), and I think they finally agreed because they thought it would be "educational".

I thought of it more as a time to get away from my parents. Spending a whole summer cooped up in the house with them seemed like a boring plan, compared with getting to see my friend who had moved away two years earlier, and getting to run around a huge outdoor paradise. I imagined "swimmin' holes", campfires, horse riding, and all kinds of fun activities that had nothing to do with "education". Two guys with a whole farm to run around on sounded like the perfect summer. Turns out, I got a kind of education that would stay with me for my whole life.

My third or fourth day there, I was already kind of bored. Life there was so simple and slow. There were chores to do, cleaning up after animals, that kind of thing. I was starting to think it was a lot of work to live on a farm, and no fun at all. My friend told me to take a break one afternoon, and go sit in the barn. I asked him what kind of break he meant. He told me that one of the hay barns was the best place for reading, and a very relaxing spot. I grabbed a paperback I almost had forgotten I had with me, and decided to give it a try. Sure, I thought, the barn would be a quiet place to read. I could use some time alone.

There were no animals in this particular barn. It was a kind of barn for storing large amounts of hay, and some equipment.

The huge sliding door was open just a bit, and I silently slipped through. I suddenly was glad I had entered silently, because it sounded like someone else was already in the barn. In fact, it sounded like someone was having some kind of fit!

I slowly edged around some stacks of hay, towards the sound. I couldn't identify the sounds very well, but it sounded like someone was jumping around, or throwing bales of hay. I thought perhaps someone was stacking them or something. Their heavy breath was echoing softly throughout the whole barn, so it sounded like hard work!

Then I saw the girl. She was about my age, or maybe a year older. She was dancing!

In a corner of the barn where loose hay was piled up everywhere, she turned and twisted her body in a wild dancing fashion. There was no music anywhere, except the rushing wind of her own wild breathing, and she was completely naked.

I froze. My heart and breath stopped. My eyes were drawn like magnets to stay on her, despite her frenzied movements. She leapt and spun, sometimes grabbing handfuls of hay, and tossing them into the air, smiling as the stuff fell over her like spring rain. She jumped time and time again into huge piles of hay, burying herself and digging herself back out again, with laughter. Sometimes as she readied herself for a big dive, she'd back away from that corner of the barn, and run at full speed back towards it.

It was at one of those times she backed a far enough towards me to sense my presense. It's not that she saw me. She could just tell someone was there. Maybe she could tell from the time I first walked in. I don't know. But at that moment, she turned to look at me. We stood three or four feet apart, just looking at one another. She didn't say a word. Neither did I.

Her reddish-blond hair was matted with hay, but it looked as natural as anything, and as beautiful as any girl's hairstyle I have ever seen. Her body was freckled and fair. Her small breasts moved in and out with her heavy breathing. Sweat glistened across her forehead and freckled shoulders. How long had she been dancing and playing out there? She looked exhausted.

She saw me glance over her body, and there was a slight smile on her perfect lips. She was comfortable in her body, and I could tell she liked it. I could see she wasn't like other girls, that would go out of their way to be 'modest', and cover up a leg that was 'showing a bit much'. She was real. She was honest. She was Beautiful. I had never met a girl like that.

We stood facing each other for what seemed like an eternity, but I'm sure it was two or three long minutes. Then she turned and fled. Her pale bottom was small and athletic. I thought, maybe she was an athlete, and this was a workout routine for her? She grabbed some jeans and a t-shirt that had been laid to one side, and some tennis shoes, but she didn't put any of it on. She smiled at me one more time, and slipped out the door on the other side of the barn, still naked.

I never saw her again. I asked my friend who the girl in the barn was. I thought maybe his neighbors down the road had a daughter or something. He said he didn't know who she was, and he had never seen her at school. When he spoke about her, though, just in that one sentence, he had a far-away look in his eyes, and I could tell that he had seen her too. But we didn't mention that. Somehow we just both knew we couldn't talk about it. It was holy, or special somehow, and talking about it might have disturbed the magic of the memory. The conversation just ended there. We never mentioned her again.

Not a day goes by that I haven't seen that girl in my mind, whirling and smiling . . .

Glen

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