Posts Tagged: 30 days of beauty
born a queen at the end of the world
29th day of noting beautiful things, and an April weekend:
- A long walk on the beach in a drizzly, blustery, grey, chilly spring day.
- Yellow: Daffodils. Forsythia. Tulips. After months of monotone, seeing colour again is like a drink of fresh water. Particularly against the backdrop of a drizzly, blustery, grey, chilly spring day.
- The crescent moon tossing up there like some kind of groovy luminescent canoe all aglow in a velvet sky.
- Cousins. The kind like Mia who throw together wonderful dinners and who make catching up over a bottle of wine one of the most natural and restful and necessary parts of a week. Or the kind like Pati, easy, beautiful, bright and able to bring you back down back home amidst those other millions of people in a big ol' city. And all the other ones who have come together on that funny forum called facebook. It’s kind of like going to Grandma’s at Christmas every day.
- A baby girl. The newest member of a family. And the harbinger of a new generation. It’s a day like today that reminds you that living is like the tides – always renewing, always gifting, always presenting new reasons to hope. Welcome to the world Elizabeth Mary. We’re really glad you’re here.
A rambling old river twists through the fields
Ancient names printed on shields
Gifts arrive for a baby girl
Born a queen at the end of the world
~from “Song From the End of the World” – The Waterboys
a quiet weekend and twenty-seventh day of noting beautiful stuff
beautiful things found in the process of a quiet, sun-filled weekend:
- Queen Street East buskers: the one at the LCBO near my house who plays all the best soulful rock songs from the seventies and the nineties (reminds me of a band I once loved back in Windsor); and the gorgeous, gorgeous blues player with the really long black and grey braids and sunglasses and the warm and pleasant "why thank you" down at the other LCBO; (and no, I didn't spend my whole weekend hanging about the local liquor stores); and some seasonal newbies today: the pair of teenage girls singing (pretty badly actually, but they'll grow, I have no doubt) and playing guitar by the library and the young guy cranking out heavy metal solos just down the way in front of the church.
- Colour. The forsythia have been blooming all week. And crocus and scilla are popping up willy nilly in the greening lawns. And the colour of the trees – not only the busting out buds in shades of soft green, but the branches which seem to be pulsing with deeper, richer hue – more black looking against the early morning or evening light.
- This movie, and this one, and this one. All three about the connection between beauty and love – how one enhances the other.
- Muted sunlight and cool breezes awakening me in morning instead of the alarm clock.
- Evening light:
selma’s story – twenty-sixth thing
My bloggy pal Selma wrote a story about an artist and a poet called Donald yesterday. If you've read me for any length of time, you'd know that it's my kind of story.
It's a story about beauty, about discovering how to see it and being thankful for the gifts we are given - those kinds of gifts that form who one becomes over the course of a personal evolution.
Go read Selma's story here. It's called Artist in the Park. And it's the twenty-sixth beautiful thing in my thirty days of finding them.
a benevolent rabbit called steve
Twenty-fifth beautiful thing – sweet girl and her extra special Easter dessert creation. Apparently the Easter Bunny's name is Steve. Who knew?
they’re ba-a-a-ack…
Standing up pine cones all around the neighbourhood. Find my explanation here. Can you give me a more feasible one?
Maybe the faeries stand them up because they think they're so beautiful. In honour of their hard work let's call the pine cones beautiful thing number 24.
number 23
Nick Lowe singing a song he wrote for some guy who used to be his father-in-law. (Oh, um yeah, that was Johnny Cash.)
Twenty-third beautiful find in the late winter/early spring thirty day search for such.
every little thing’s gonna be alright
Beautiful thing sighting today: Two elderly ladies sitting on a bench at the mall waiting for a taxi. One has a walker. The other one reaches over and pats her forearm, not in a mild way, but with a robustness that comes with years and familiarity. Giving the arm a squeeze she leans in and nudges her friend with her shoulder and says something in Italian.
I don’t know what she said but the gesture said, “I love hanging out with you pal.”
(that'll be number 21)
shadows
How does it feel to start moving outdoors again? It's like your feet get itching after a few hours at work. You start to get claustrophobic. You notice people graviating toward doors and windows. You sneer at the angry drivers honking insults at one another. No wonder they're angry, they're stuck inside their cars.
You step out in the morning and your mood lifts. By the time you get to work you're already thinking about lunch hour – and not the lunch part.
Beautiful thing (#18) noted every lunch hour walk this week: shadows.
another week around some beautiful moments
Maybe we should all be really thankful for winter if only because we get to experience such an appreciation for the onset of spring. My world is readying for the grand re-birthing of nature in all her glorious forms and we're celebrating already. Here are some moments of beauty from a sunshiny week in which sits the fifteenth day of thirty in posting such:
- A whistling bus driver who barks me good day: “Have a great one darlin”
- Air that no longer bites my skin but touches it. (In a month or two it will be kissing it.)
- A really good cup of strong tea, made for me by a colleague with herbs sent to him from his peeps back in East Jerusalem
- Bright and real smiles from strangers in the street – if we could just bottle this sunshine…
- An expanded network of lovely and talented blogland people, because I took a risk with some creative play in Magpie Tales
- Birdsong. The birds are going bonkers, just like humanity, with the spring-like weather
- Longer days. Going outside at the end of the work day and finding sun setting everything under it aglow and lighting the very air around you in purples and golds and blues
- Long walks. I'm once again enjoying the spiritual and psychological as well as healthful benefits of extended walking on sidewalks that were laden with snow and ice only a few weeks ago
- Planning two summer vacations, one with an old and dear friend and one with a special niece and thinking about another summer season spent outdoors
published in the beautiful Bella Grace!
