Seven

David Taylor recently did a blog entry on 7 things that are beautiful and I was inspired. I had to follow suit. 7 beautiful things:

1. Mazzy Star and her Into Dust introduced to me by my friend Amy who is living in Guatemala and helping the people right now while they recover from a hurricane AND a volcanic eruption (Amy is beautiful too). I fall in love with my husband even more every time I hear Mazzy Star.





2. Ikiru, the movie directed by Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa is quickly becoming a favorite director of mine. This film takes you through a man's last year of life; it is a powerful and intelligent film that desires to inspire its viewers to live and truly live, to Carpe Diem. "... make the most of what you have. It is later than you think." (Horace) Ikiru is beautiful.

Takashi Shimura in Ikiru

3. My friend Stephen McCants gave us a breadmaker for a wedding present. Thank you, Stephen! It has been such an incredible blessing for this gluten free lady. Neal was brave and and tried making the first loaf, initiating the bread machine with gluten free bread. The warm smell of yeast and gluten free goodness filled our home; it's been hard to stop since. It's so good with a little butter and honey! Homemade bread IS beautiful.




4. A few months ago my husband sent me a link to some images to inspire creativity. I was fascinated by the fact I was drawn to the photographs with umbrellas in them. Here's my favorite: (click here to see a larger view of it.)

Waiting for rain by Simona Cristureanu

5. And speaking of rain, last summer we saw a horrible drought last summer with temperatures remaining over 100 for over 80 days. This summer, there is rain (nothing like three years ago, but wonderful none the less).






6. A couple of years ago I actually submitted a poem to a contest that I didn't make the final. When I read the finalists and this woman's work, I fell in love with her wit and craft. Love this poem. I think it's beautiful:

Cartography by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I want to know your body as I know
these sandstone cliffs behind our house-take treks
for weeks along your spine, traverse your neck
with slow, exploratory eyes and go
for long excursions on your limbs with no
set plan for how I might get home, except
to know that you will lead me there. I'll step
so lightly, leave no evidence. And oh,
the maps I'll make, my love, will not be made
of paper but of tune. No rise of you
will be unknown to me, no inch unsung.
I know topographies change by the day—
that wind and water have their way. So true.
A good mapmaker's work is never done.


7. Okay, I know it's simple but fresh herbs are beautiful! N has an amazing green thumb bringing back to life my wedding fern that had almost completely perished. With fresh oregano and thyme and tarragon and basil and curly and flat leaf parsley at our fingertips, meals are so much more lively!

grace revisited.

mickey myers night falls on jericho street

i love u2's song grace. it is a blanket of comfort as i play it over and over. "what once was hurt, what once was friction, what left a mark, no longer stings; because grace makes beauty out of ugly things." i read an article in Christianity today where Bono speaks on grace. "Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff."

i would like to add a bit more to it. grace interrupts the consequences of death and grime. the cross was an act of Grace, but it was costly. i still have to respond to that grace. i still have to be proactive. otherwise, it cheapens grace, "it is forgiveness without repentance" as Bonhoeffer said.

i have found grace offered to me over and over; but if i don't accept it, move with it, then the beauty of it is lost.

emanuel gat dance

beauty revisited

"The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread."

D.H. Lawrence

i've decided that the rest of april will be enchanting. no matter what may come, this month will be a month of seeking beauty and being enchanted by little things. i'm going to two doctors today. i'm going to look for enchantment. my hips are killing me, limiting me, taking away mobility and movement. i'm going to find a way to be stationary and enchanted.

this morning's thunderstorms delighted me as they pulled me out of bed crying, Get up! we are greening your trees! come look and see! today i decided to send in my first submission ever to a poetry contest. woah. prarie home companion is having a bed of roses love sonnet contest; the prize is a sleep number bed and 3 dozen roses. i've been sleeping on the same mattress for 22 years. i love roses. winning would be beyond enchanting. so, i'll just be enchanted by the idea of a bed of roses and the fact that i actually wrote a sonnet and submitted it.

yesterday on my pursuit of beauty i googled (who would have thought that "google" would become a verb?) dogwoods, and found a stunning, enchanting photograph taken by a conservationist and nature photographer. i took a photography class in '94 at cedar valley college; my prof hated nature photography. i, on the otherhand, will always be a fan. it takes an amazing eye to capture images in a way that amaze, take us beyond reality, enchant us.

http://www.paulzaretsky.com/

beautiful things

seven straight days of physical pain, and i am desperate for relief. so today i sought beauty. when i lived in amsterdam i became so overwhelmed by the power of pain, by the sorrow and suffering, i shut the door to experiencing pain. life was easier that way. so the woman who wept in my lap when her two children were taken from her-- i didn't feel it. i will never forget it. i had a friend alex who i tried desperately to keep from a drug addicted boyfriend; i didn't feel anything when months later i saw her still with him. i will never forget it. but in shutting out pain, i shut another door. i spent a week in the breathtaking beauty of the black forrest. i didn't feel it. spent a month in the english countryside taking long walks down wooded paths. i didn't feel it.

today i found the music of my second favorite film score composer, zbigniew preisner. he composed the music to two of my favorite films (kieslowski's rouge and bleu). faulkner once said, "Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain". camus on beauty, "Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time". janis joplin sang the blues. it's said that her mom once asked her why she screamed when she had such a pretty voice. it's because she had "soul", wanted "you to feel what i feel". "You know why we’re stuck with the myth that only black people have soul? Because white people don’t let themselves feel things. Man, you and any housewife have all sorts of pain and joy. You’d have soul if you’d give in to it.”

preisner's work is a thing of bitter beauty. listen and weep. it's that good. it's got soul. i've been listening to it this afternoon and i am transported by the beauty, by the music, and the pain seems.... trifle. it's like being in rivendell.

http://www.preisner.com/

"When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be -- I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free." Wendell Berry

"Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentations, laughter, to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to the world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water." Albert Schweitzer

1996 lake tahoe, view from heavenly by micah holcombe

defining beauty

I uncovered beauty this morning, but I thought I would first research beauty to see what the www has uncovered. I googled beauty and clicked on images. What first appeared was pages and pages of women intermixed with pics of beauty treatments and flowers and food and animals. I then wiki'd beauty and found that our online encyclopedia source of all things known and unknown defines it: "Beauty is commonly defined as a characteristic present in a person, place, object or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning or satisfaction to the mind or to the eyes, arising from sensory manifestations such as a shape, color, personality, sound, design or rhythm". Physical beauty is a predominate theme throughout the definitions I found. Paris sought it in Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. Beauty pageants run rampant throughout the earth, as our eye looks to quantify "beauty".

Plenty words have been written on the subject and the planet's problematic issues with beauty, so I will not go into any diatribes or soap boxes. Been there. Done that. Schumann, the composer, distinguishes beauty as either natural or poetic. Natural beauty is simply sensual delight. Poetic beauty begins where natural beauty leaves off. Ah, how this poet's soul feasted on those words. In the Old Testament, instances of beauty are first mentioned to describe Sarah and Rebekah and Leah. The first mention of of the word beauty is in Esther and then in Psalms where it is in reference to God. Proverbs addresses it as fleeting. And Peter states that unfading beauty is a gentle and quiet spirit, the closing word on beauty in the Bible.

So, after a very minimal search on a much sought after topic, I will attempt to describe what I saw. Poem to follow.