Beauty Break

What would happen if we asked what we can do instead of complain about what we can’t do in this pandemic world of ours? What if we offered something beautiful as our default?

Here’s where I find myself just a little past the one year mark of the pandemic: I’m making a hard turn toward beauty in all its manifestations, I’m seeking out the optimistic people, I’m jumping across chasms, I’m holding out my hand (metaphorically), I’m deliberately choosing to look at the great work of sunrise, the great work of nature, I’m immersing myself in good thoughts, humour, fun. It’s true, we’re still limited, but there is still so much that we can do. And yes, I know there will be dark days, frustrations, and lots of difficult and hard things to come. But I’m hoping to train my eyes on the light rather than the shadow to the best of my ability.

And so yes, pandemic brain is real. We’ve been living with this low (or not so low) grade stress for a year and it has affected everyone I know to one degree or another.

For myself, I find my thinking is better when I’ve been reading good books, listening to wonderful music, taking photographs, being creative, and watching movies.

I’m wondering what would change for us, (I really mean me), if we just stopped looking at all the crumby news about anti-maskers, for example, and just started taking up space with all the beautiful things we’re reading, watching, listening to, doing, thinking, making.

I’ve moseyed back to a longtime favourite poem by Hafiz (translator, Daniel Ladinsky):

With That Moon Language

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them,
”Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud:
Otherwise,
Someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this,
This great pull in us
To connect.

Why not become the one
Who lives with a full moon in each eye
That is always saying,

With that sweet moon language,

What every other eye in this world
is dying to
hear.

I thought about this poem after reading the following tweet by Matthew Burnside:

i know we don’t know each other. we may never meet. that’s ok. those stories yr holding on to in yr heart, all the poems that u are & secrets u bear but do not tell anyone because u don’t know how, they’re important. & u deserve to dream, & u deserve dignity. & i’m glad yr here.

— Matthew Burnside (@MatthewBurnsid7) March 24, 2021

And there it was. He was saying very generously what I was dying to hear. And it made such a huge difference to my day.

We all deserve dignity and to feel that the poetry of who we are matters. We all deserve to dream.

We don’t need to be perfect and not every day is going to be joy and fun and laughter. But on the days when you’re feeling strong, I wonder, how can you share that? There are lines by Rumi:

Pale sunlight
pale the wall.

Love moves away.
The light changes.

I need more grace
than I thought.

And those last two lines have been rolling around in my head the last while. Like, wow, this time is exacting more from me than I would have expected, had I been able to at all expect a pandemic.

Again with Rumi (Coleman Barks translator):

Be generous
Be grateful. Confess when you’re not.

Honestly, maybe this has been what has been most surprising for me, about me, in the past quarter of the pandemic — my lack of generosity in certain areas. But yes, confess when you are not….keep trying, I tell myself. Because really, if I have a mantra that has been running through this whole thing it is that we are all trying our best. Even those who you think are not, really, they probably are. I’m going to give people the benefit of the doubt, which is something we always do in the library, and when we do, it works magic. I never want to forget that.

This last week the beloved Polish poet, Adam Zagajewski left us. I’m a bit wrecked by that I have to say. His books are always near my reading chair in my study. He wrote the famous “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” and so many other surprising and wonderful lines.

For example,

“Only in the beauty created
by others is there consolation,
in the music of others and in others’ poems.
Only others save us,
even though solitude tastes like
opium. The others are not hell,
if you see them early, with their
foreheads pure, cleansed. by dreams.”

Other moments of beauty of late for me? Always writing with my fountain pen and beautiful Pilot ink. Or as the Goulet Pen Co. calls it a “well-behaved” ink. (I concur — I won’t use anything else).

Listening to covers on The Influences. Especially this one by Tom Cunliffe of Springsteen’s Born to Run.

If you’re missing Italy like I am, Robi Petrus, who I’ve followed for ages on Instagram, has a new website and it’s amazing! Check it out.

There’s an Alice Neel retrospective exhibition on at The Met in NYC which of course we won’t be going to but there is this video:

You can watch the premiere online at 7pm, March 25, 2021 (today) as well, which is very cool.

The world is a bit of a complicated mess right now, but what happens if we try to praise it anyway? What if we share the consolations of the beauty we have found in the work of others? What if we try to speak that sweet moon language, and try to give to people what they need to hear?