Hillscape

Frequent Photo

Right now I’m looking out the window and seeing Humboldt reclining against the couch of Earth, her breast-like hills swelling up and touching a coverlet of blue silk sky with tendrils of grass the color of a wedding ring.  And I almost feel the beauty inside.  But a half an hour ago I was moving through my email efficiently, reading and replying quickly focused on nothing more than words on screen.  Then a collection of those words changed the morning.

You know the emails.  They come almost every day—an inspiring story, a group of lovely photos, an essay…  Depending on your mood, you read them or not but either way they’re gone in a minute or two, right after you click delete.  However, once in awhile, one will grab you by the throat and you will read it gasping for breath.  Then the prints of its emotional fingers will stay on your skin and the bruises on your soul for days.  This morning I read that email.  Then I investigated it on Snopes.com which sent me to the original piece—which won a Pulitzer Prize.

And the writing in that piece….resonated. And when I finished my throat ached and my face was damp with tears.

Please, take five minutes and read the article.  It will make you think about your relationship to beauty and your relationship to your life.

It is called Pearls before Breakfast. It investigates what happens when a world class musician, playing on a 3 million dollar violin, treats a train station full of unprepared commuters to a passionate 45 minute concert.  Can we hear beauty or see beauty without its proper context?

Is there a way to see the pearls that drop around us even when we’re busy mucking out the pigpen?