To them, you were not a mystery at all. You were always under the limelight, subject to all sorts of intrusive personal dissection. However, you didn’t even blush when their hands were all over your body, when the last trace of privacy evaporated. To no avail, I advised you, be careful with the deadly sins of humans. You were not one of them and so that you wouldn’t understand how treacherous a man can be.
No, you told me, ‘life is short, like Shubert’s Unfinished symphony.’ Symphony No.8? Why Shubert never got to finish it? Was it because the symphony was simply too heavenly to be true, even he himself never surmised that he could come out with this chief c-oeuvre? Or there’s a simpler explanation, the life was just too short, like a short-lived insect?
Either way, it’s bad, you argued that. How so? I asked. People never saw through your beauty, as if their surreptitious glance was not piercing enough; they never fully understood it, just like listening to a Schubert and concluded that Schubert was just a lucky composer who managed to decipher the secret of harmony and melody.
Life is short, you said, it’s beyond any dispute. At any given moment, your beauty might become the history of today’s glory. News gave way to mundane bedside stories. ‘that’s why I dance, like a desperate baroness amid the crowd, trying to garner a pitiful hug,’ you lowered your head and muttered inaudibly.
Suddenly, there’s all sadness, like a vagabond tied to an addiction. She sighed. ‘I don’t belong to here,’ she continued, ‘ I might as well go back to where I was from and forget myself.’ I pretended I was listening to what she said afterwards but my mind was wandering somewhere else in the scenic depiction of Schubert’s pieces.
And then I saw what I was seeking for. The beauty of flaws. Her beauty didn’t make her invisible. She was flawed just like everyone else, just like Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. But did she even care to correct whatever that was deemed wrong? No she didn’t even care and she suddenly seemed more resplendent than ever. Light of flaws was emanating from her divine feature and she flashed a smile. A smile which carried the impact that was tantamount to the renowned Unfinished Symphony, simple yet grandeur.
Beauty, behind the curtain of perfection,
Is the imperfection.
Beyond the imperfection,
There’s unfinished symphony played,
Through a single brass,
That sounds like a full orchestra.
That’s beauty, so real…
