Tuesday, April 18, 2006

The Way of a Lady: Rule Five

A Lady Adorns her World.
She knows and practices at the Beautiful.

Being a Lady is an Art. An Art is the willful crafting to make more useful or beautiful. A Lady, on most fronts, is employed in arranging her words and actions to improve the use of society but her audience is manifestly susceptible to the improvement before their eyes and ears. "The eye sees but is never satisfied, the ear hears but is never filled." Visual and aural beauty are the advertisement for the underlying gifts of order. It is the wrapping paper without which the recipient would not know they received a gift. While there must be a gift inside the paper, a Lady seeks to announce what value a gift has by the attention to its adornment. The setting of a table should refer to the height of the meal. The dress she wears should claim the formality or informality of the moment. Her style, hair, makeup and perfume should align the senses of her company to receive her continuing graces. Her choice of music fills a room with information without which the company would be bereft of guidance. They would fill in the blank without her aid and then the Lady would have relinguished a strong ally in communicating the good she strives to do others. Because aesthetics are a mentally enjoyed sensuality (rather than a physically enjoyed) her efforts can be trained in the common patterns of humankind. Red and green are complements regardless of nation or era. Certain combinations of pitch please both the Orient and the Occident. It has always been thus and is consequently information that can be learned.

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