I debated which order to post these two stories in, whether to lead with today’s ugliness and follow it with the earlier story of nobility, thus providing a happy ending — or the other way round.
I am not looking for a happy ending, I decided — I want to balance the ugliness with the beauty to be sure, but I don’t want the beauty to seem as though it’s just canceling out the ugliness, and that’s what gave m the clue to my title:
Ugliness cannot cancel beauty: that’s the thing. So I’ve left the ugliness in second place, so it’s still vivid, not somehow made tolerable by the beauty.
And still the beauty outshines it.
