There are two really great "first snow of the season" experiences. One is waking up to a layer of the stuff blanketing the world. The other is looking up into a light at night and seeing it falling all around you.
After standing under the light, trying to capture a picture and feeling the snow on my face and hair and seeing it dotting my glasses and my phone (camera), I walked home significantly lighter than I felt when I left. Happy winter.
It's been raining all day today. I was itching to get out for a walk early, but seeing the hunched people down there on the sidewalk bracing themselves against the weather got me finding things to do around here instead. Eventually it got to the "go now or don't go" point so I layered on my rain jacket over my coat and went out.
Me and my umbrella wandered a bit in the Harbourfront, took a few pictures and watched the people skate at the outdoor rink down by the lake and felt I like a wuss for putting the outing off. I walked some more and then went up to the grocery store and on the way home got a bottle of wine then the rain changed to snow. Apparently we had some snow when I was in Vancouver all those weeks ago, but I never saw it. So technically, this is my first snow of the season.
There are two really great "first snow of the season" experiences. One is waking up to a layer of the stuff blanketing the world. The other is looking up into a light at night and seeing it falling all around you.
After standing under the light, trying to capture a picture and feeling the snow on my face and hair and seeing it dotting my glasses and my phone (camera), I walked home significantly lighter than I felt when I left. Happy winter.
Snow falling in a streetlight: Beautiful thing number eighty.
Did you know that eighty percent of the information we receive comes through our eyes? And if you compare light energy to musical scales, it would only be one octave that the naked eye could see which is right in the middle? And aren’t we grateful for our brains that can take this electrical impulse that comes from light energy to create images in order for us to explore our world? And aren’t we grateful that we have hearts that can feel the vibrations in order for us to allow ourselves to feel the pleasure and beauty of nature? ~Louie Schwartzberg
Our American friends are celebrating Thanksgiving today. Anybody's Thanksgiving Day is a good reminder for all of us to express some gratitude. If you need some help thinking about what to be grateful for, Louie Schwartzberg has some ideas.
In fact he’s done such a good job in reminding me, I’m calling him beautiful thing number seventy-seven.
Over the weekend Ceri and I spent a good deal of time walking around. We did the forty minute walk back and forth between each other’s places a number of times; at one point yesterday taking the long way around to stop and have the big brunch and $3 Caesars by the lake as we did a few weeks ago. (Justified of course by all the walking.)
Saturday we met up for lunch downtown after he’d spent a few hours in the office and I got a very happy re-blonding of my blonde. We managed to make it through the throngs at Yonge-Dundas Square pretty much unscathed and lunched at a brew pub looking down from the second floor into Yonge Street and for a little while, the Occupy Toronto protest making a pass-through.
Yesterday we strolled around his beautiful and historic St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood, a place of enormous riches for someone who seeks out beauty in the corners of a city. The thing I love about living in the heart of a big city is that there is always some new inspiration, some new splash of colour or interesting character to stimulate the imagination. It’s particularly easy to find these things in neighbourhood gems like this one. Ceri was ever patient as I stopped every minute or so to be inspired once again through my camera’s lens.
As we stood outside the lovely façade of an old bookstore looking through the window at the cacophony of stacks and piles that simply could not bear the slightest bit of organization or categorization, I said “I believe your neighbourhood is going to have to be beautiful thing number seventy-six.”
How much do I LOVE this gal? She's has to be the smartest, most insightful, ascerbic, funny and talented writer I know. Slide the video ahead to 5:38 or so and you'll see her in all her marvellousness.
(THEN – after you've enjoyed Tricia extolling the value of finding beauty, wind back and enjoy Hippie News. Hippie News rocks.)
Tricia and Winston and all the folks at Hippie News – beautiful thing number 60.
My weekend was restorative. I decompressed from the hellish work week previous and all that time not doing things at home. Like laundry. It was the perfect weekend for a recovery.
Saturday morning I awake to rain (never a sorry sound to wake up to as far as I’m concerned) and then thunderstorms and then drizzling rain and blustery, chilly dampness. I get out anyway and nose around downtown and buy some groceries and a few other items I’d been wanting. One could never accuse me of spoiling too much weekend doing things like housework.
Sunday morning shows pity on us weekenders, and opens the curtains wide, letting the heavens shed down a most welcome and most luminescent heat. I attend the Muhtadi International Drumming Festival up at Queen's Park. The afternoon is pretty much perfect; I move between sunny spots and shady spots and listen to drum sounds that at once electrify you and plant you on the earth. (Drumming arts at a time one needs some soul reviving: beautiful thing number forty.)
I've arranged to meet up with Kelsey so I walk slowly back through the University of Toronto Campus. It strikes me how I’d forgotten how much I love to be on a campus, and I wonder what life would be like had I chosen a path of academia. I don’t dwell on that thought too long, but I decide I need to visit this university more often. A campus bursting with green under sunlight: beautiful thing number forty-one.
As I’m heading back toward College St., groups of heavily garbed Muslim women pass me by going the other way. I can’t help but feel the contrast in us, me in my summer skirt and cleavage revealing tank top and sandals. Having just turned 50, I embrace my cleavage as a badge of honour, but the opposing theories regarding what one wears as a badge of honour is palpable as I move amongst the young women.
I smile at them as I would any stranger passing me by, though most of them, chatting amongst themselves or with thoughts elsewhere, ignore me. But then one woman makes a point of pausing to smile back with a small wave. I wave back, and the turn of her body in her long black gown and veil and charming smile makes me think suddenly of that nun who flashed the peace sign in the Woodstock movie.
Let's call the smiling women, one at the U of T on a sunny day in June 2011 and one on a muddy concert site in August 1969, beautiful things number forty-two and forty-thee.
I walk down to Spadina Ave. and hook up with Kelsey and we have dinner on a patio then take a meandering walk around the Harbourfront piers, chatting as the sun sinks in the sky and loosens its hold on the day. And I even finish the laundry.
The most beautiful word on the lips of mankind is the word "Mother," and the most beautiful call is the call of "My mother." it is a word full of hope and love, a sweet and kind word coming from the depths of the heart. The mother is every thing — she is our consolation in sorrow, our hope in misery, and our strength in weakness. She is the source of love, mercy, sympathy, and forgiveness. He who loses his mother loses a pure soul who blesses and guards him constantly.
Every thing in nature bespeaks the mother. The sun is the mother of earth and gives it its nourishment of hear; it never leaves the universe at night until it has put the earth to sleep to the song of the sea and the hymn of birds and brooks. And this earth is the mother of trees and flowers. It produces them, nurses them, and weans them. The trees and flowers become kind mothers of their great fruits and seeds. And the mother, the prototype of all existence, is the eternal spirit, full of beauty and love.
– Kahlil Gibran, from Broken Wings
Rediscovering Kahlil Gibran for the hundredth time is beautiful thing number thirty-seven.
I'm finding beauty, are you?