I just watched the movie Elegy. After watching, I was curious as to the title so I looked it up and found in Wikipedia it is
…used for a poem of mourning, […]a reflection on the death of someone or on a sorrow generally – which is a form of lyric poetry. [It] can also reflect on something which seems strange or mysterious to the author…
Which led me to a bit of a brain dump. Basically, what Elegy is to me:
Elegy… a word that fits its meaning. Beauty, unfolded, but is it really unfolded? Can it really be seen? The skin is a covering; a thing itself; but what is beneath? Not the blood that flows in the veins below the skin but really beneath all of that. Beauty is the character of the woman. The intent. The feeling she both has and gives. In such a rare combination do both the beauty of the skin and of that below stand in the same place.
Elegy… it is sad. Mourning not for the one who is sick but for the one who is confused and lost. The one who is well in body but is not well in spirit. Who sees no real beauty about himself and despises it. Only partly at first but as it grows he knows not why he is so against what it is he wants. He won’t let it out and when he does it will be too late. For as he releases it after it’s desire, the desire is going; leaving only a flowing trace.
Elegy is not about a solution. Elegy is about the process and the discovery of what is lost. Not about recovering a lost item but the emotion that comes from missing it. What it means can only be apparent after the item is no longer available. Not only the mourning of the loss but the mourning of not seeing it for it’s true value at a time when it could be treasured.
Yes, Elegy is only part of the equation. It does not apologize for being only that part because it plays it perfectly. Discovery of the further process can come from Elegy but it is not promised. Elegy is only that which allows one to pore over one’s observations and express them in a way that works for them. Elegy is that alone.