I am a definite adherent to the notion that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that it takes all kinds, and that life’s rich gtapestry allows for a variety of tastes. But c’mon. Just like few are indifferent to the smack-your-face-till-it-swells beauty of a northern New Mexico sunset or the awe-ionspiring majesty of some giant mountain....zzzzzzzzz. Sorry. Nature is pretty, but boring. I digress.

Whether nor not we agree that something is actually beautiful, I wonder if we can’t find some common ground in identifying the contrast I call “Pretty Ugly.” This is the proverbial lipstick on a sow (not you, Palin, get over yourself, not every lipstick reference is about you). I found the perfect example driving my children to school not too long ago. We drove past a trailer park in a neighboring town.(Note that I throw int he fct that the park is in a ‘neighboring’ town in order to distance myself...not a nearby town, not an adjacent town, a ‘neighboring’ town....you can take the girl out of Newton, but you just can’t take the “I don’t live anywhere near a trailer park and I doubt I’d even recognize one if I saw one” out of the Newton girl).

So, as I drove past this enclave of portable living (another concept for another day), my attention was drawn by ... well, no, my voyeuristic tendencies forced me to gape at the trailer on the edge of the park to because it was so, well, noticeable. This particular trailer was on the small side, I think. The trailer rested at what, if it were a beret perched on a head and not a home perched on some cinder blocks and what looked to be the kind of metal barrel one keeps one’s toxic waste in, would be a jaunty angle. And there was a green tarp lying across the back of the thing at an angle, partially blocking some sliding windows, as though the tarp were bangs that the trailer had tossed out of its sliding eyes. So there was an odd mix of inattention and almost flippant style to the back of this trailer. And I watched it because it looked like it could fall at any moment, and who doesn’t want to see tht, right?

As I drove further I had a view of the side of the trailer. A small unpainted wooden platform led to four steps up, sideways, to a small screened enclosure where, presumably, the main entrance sat ensconced, although I couldn’t see that far into it. Even if I could have, though, I wouldn’t have. Because adorning the stairs, and the area of the “lawn” next to the stairs, and all four corners of the small wooden platform preceding the stairs, were big white statues of gods and goddesses in various states and undress, with a smattering of pillars thrown in, but they were a lot shorter than the gods and goddesses, as though they were placed there in case the statutes needed something to lean on, or something to put their soda down on. So, you could barely get past these things, I imagined, to get into the screened porch. And I couldn’t help but think that some of those pillars might not be a better prop for the rear end of the trailer than the toxic sludge holders, but what do I know.

If it had been summer, or even mid-spring, I might have missed this entirely, because some trees between the park and the road might have obscured my view. But being dismal and wintery, it was all mine for the taking in. And as snarky as the voice in my head was being, it was shushed by this little part of my brain that was struck by the sadness and poignancy in taking something so truly ugly, and trying to make it beautiful, but really only making it plain why it was so ugly to begin with. Pretty Ugly.