I got my hands on some Spanish handicraft magazines from the middle of the last century - «Labores del hogar» (Housework). I remember they were like that in the Soviet Union. Still, they were probably like that all over the world - patterns, knitting, embroidery designs, pictures of doilies, tablecloths, dressed up children, lace, beautiful women with perfect hairdos - all this endlessly sweet, quiet, a little naive, long outdated and out of circulation beauty.

Like my magazines, culture largely discarded this beauty without regret. Its time has passed. It is now something else entirely - an echo of the footsteps of the passing. The passing is always an eternal movement, a constant transformation of beauty that no one can stop. Its form, proportions, and colors change from century to century. It floats up, down, or flies parallel to the earth, the sea, the Eiffel Tower, then the Pisa Tower, goes to the left, crosses the ocean, and there gives a new flower, a bouquet, a whole sea of flowers.

The vision and understanding of beauty change, but beauty herself does not; she is constant. True beauty does not age and will never go out of fashion. It is still very expensive and desirable. It still beckons and drives you crazy - the auction hammer pounds relentlessly, conquering new and new degrees of lust to possess it.

Contrary to popular belief, it seems to me that the history of people is not an endless series of destructions and wars, it is the history of art, it is the history of creating beauty - three hundred thousand years of creation. Yes, and destruction too, but the first one is still more; otherwise, even now, we would not differ from the upright humanoid with a bloody stone in a dirty hand. Yes, Patroclus killed Sarpedon, Hector killed Patroclus, and Hector killed Achilles, but the sword trembles in the hand of Menelaus, again struck by the beauty of Helen.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris was built for almost 200 years. By the standards of that time, several generations of people who built it were replaced - the stubbornness with which people, using not the perfect tools. Its builders erected this masterpiece suggests the idea that for man beauty is something like a cult, which, intertwined with religion, serving it in the beginning, itself eventually becomes a cult, the newest religion - art describes the world, man, his place in it and the meanings that we always lack.

The yellowed pages of a needlework magazine, all those lovely ornaments, and lace are a metaphor for the true nature of man, a symbol of creation, of arranging the world, of awareness, and of a passionate desire for beauty. You can’t hide it; you can’t run away from it; you can’t close your eyes to it - it is clearly seen through the dense veil of violence, wars, murder, injustice, and senseless destruction. A human cannot organically live without beauty and needs it as much as air, water, and food.

Beauty is people’s most valuable resource. Yes, we can live without it, and we can’t live without air, but what will this life be without beauty? What will our life be like without music, painting, and the ordinary beauty of a grandmother’s tea set or a street flower bed?

Any parent knows how important it is in raising a child to avoid the negative label «bad,» as it can become ingrained in their minds, forming appropriate behavior.

In recent years, looking at the ever-expanding area of territories engulfed in war, senseless destruction, and killing of millions, feeling impotent anger and bewilderment at how quickly the thinnest cultural layer that distinguishes a reasonable man from a raging animal is being stripped away, I still want to remind myself and all of us that our true purpose is not destruction, but creation.

It is to exalt, to dignify, to put the world in order, to make it a more livable place - that is the simplest, most obvious meaning of existence, requiring neither sacrifice nor heroic effort. This is Labores del hogar. This is Housework.