Something I try to do every morning before I do anything else, before I make breakfast or a cup of tea, before I feed the dogs and all the other mouths and beaks, before I check on the horses, before I collect eggs…is step into the large garden here and see what needs harvesting, what needs water, what needs deadheading, what needs fussing over. It’s a literally beautiful way to begin the day — outside where life is apparent and thrumming and aesthetically pleasing to the eye. There is texture, color, weirdness, abundance. It’s good for my soul.
This morning, as I picked a passel of zinnias and enjoyed their different sizes, colors, and details, I thought about how important it is to foster an appreciation for beauty in ourselves and others, to develop an aesthetic, a taste for the sublime. It’s probably what bothers me most as I look at our education systems in North America — the gaping, yawning abyss that exists where art and music classes used to reside. I worry about focusing on teaching kids reading, writing, and arithmetic, racing China to produce tech-savvy children who can build the computers of the future. What about beauty? What about looking at a painting and crying and not being able to express why but just knowing that an invisible string has been tied tight between the artist’s paintbrush and the beats of your own heart. What about looking out at a pristine landscape and understanding how important it is to keep that beauty as it is? When we know about beauty and value it, when we have a developed aesthetic, we want to conserve beauty, we want to grow beauty, we want to design beautiful buildings that reflect nature, we want to grow beautiful gardens that feed our bodies and nurture our souls. When we have been taught about what is beautiful, we care about beauty. I’m over art that is solely about politics, about making statements about how ugly and
Mercy. Love. Kindness.
Thank you.
With you girl!!! 100%
yes. yes. yes!
AMEN! This reads like a sermon from the Church of the Noisy Plume and I am here for it. Art in all its forms (witnessing it, making it, sharing it) has saved me and fed me more times than I can count. There is so much beauty and wonder in the world and it is a choice to see it every day. Cheers to making that choice and to your beautiful zinnias!
I so agree with what you just wrote, so much.
This is the perfect picture, you make gorgeous beautiful photographs that I have been following for x years, but sometimes one comes out and it is perfect, the colours, the location, the people, here you and that gorgeous Pyrenees, the flowers, their colours, the hat, the jeans, the belt, even the T-shirt, the ring, the grass, the shoes…the smile absolutely everything is perfect. Reflects your beautiful life which is, in a way, your beautiful mind.
1000x YES!
Also, crucifixes in jars of urine?!?! Someone actually did that? Ugh. No. Just no. I crave beauty to my very depths. Such assaults leave my stomach churning. What a blessing when I click on your blog. I feel like I can breathe when I’m here.
It’s like you’re in my head… I’ve been a critical care nurse for almost 10 years, and I feel so, so jaded. I’m taking a break altogether and focusing on other things, hoping maybe it’ll give me a fresh start. Maybe I’ll go back eventually. Maybe I won’t. But I’m ready to see the good (and the beauty) in the world again.
Gorgeous photo of you, by the way!
Beauty is what we as humans were born to see. Amen Plume!
Always so beautifully said. I feel this so deeply.
I so have been enjoying your wave of posts these past several weeks. It is a refuge for sure and I am grateful for your words and images. Thank you. Thank you.