Most afternoons I walk downhill to a neighborhood park with my dog. The park is on the lake, and has a stunning view of downtown Seattle. Families fly kites on its rolling hills. Sea planes fly overhead. Sailboats swoosh. Water sparkles. It is just about every cliche of a fantabulously gorgeous place rolled into one.
There are also rusting industrial gas towers mixed in with the view. The property used to be a gasification plant, and the city could have taken the towers down in the 1970s when this super-prime waterfront real estate was turned into a park, but instead they were incorporated into the park design (maybe due to environmental clean-up complications, I don’t know).
The towers are as much a part of the beauty as the idyllic stuff.
And it’s not that the towers enhance the beauty of the view by providing contrast. As if the view is beautiful but the towers are not. If there were only surface beauty, the place would not move me in the same way. There would be no room for me to find my way in.
I keep discovering this tension in my life, again and again (and, oh…again). I have one foot in lightness and the other in darkness, at all times. My city is heartbreakingly beautiful precisely because half of the year it is miserable and wet. My love for my partner is richer for our troubled past. My pain is precious and delicate and I cherish it for that.
This is not “things will always get better and things will always get worse”– so just hang in there and wait for the good stuff.
It’s that when they all exist at once within, the tension creates an expansion beyond what I ever thought possible. I become bigger and more alive, humming with the energy of all that is inside of me.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: brianaaldrich
September 4, 2009 at 2:34 pm
How is it possible that you wrote this in the same afternoon that I needed to read it? I adore everything about your expansive perspective. Thank you.
Briana´s last blog ..The Laughable Lizard of Oz
Twitter: victoriashmoria
September 4, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Wow…I think you just expanded my definition of “thought sanitizing.”
Or at least, I’m seeing how thought sanitizing can happen in so many more ways than how I’ve *been* thinking of it.
I’m always learn something new from you!
Victoria Brouhard´s last blog ..The No-Brainer Scenario
Twitter: AmberStrocel
September 4, 2009 at 6:07 pm
I’m working on this idea right now. I’m learning that I’ve got to stop waiting for the good stuff. Because it never arrives. But it always leaves. I think back on times and how great they are, but I fixate on the negative in the present. But if I can appreciate all of at once, well, that might just be the secret to life.
Amber´s last blog ..Green and Frugal Picnic Rollup
Twitter: evalazza
September 6, 2009 at 10:59 am
@ Briana Love to you, girl!
@ Victora: OMG yes! A new definition of thought sanitizing, that’s exactly what we need…
@ Amber *grin*
I remember standing in front of a window the first time I went to MOMA in New York, looking out at the complex shadows the wind and the bare trees were making from the dwindling light of an early winter evening. It was as compelling to me as anything inside the galleries, and at the same time, what was outside enhanced what was inside.
It was a similar tension to what you are writing about here, and an example of how a more expansive, less judgmental conception of beauty can make our experience of the world a little richer.
Thank you for the reminder!
Matt Blair´s last blog ..Textural and Temporal
Twitter: intuitivebridge
September 8, 2009 at 10:26 am
It’s nice to see a landscape say “I am beautiful, and once I was this ugly thing also.” It’s transcendent, really.
I like the beauty of the light around those towers too.
Bridget´s last blog ..Learning the Sea
I know the park and yes the beauty lies in the whole picture. I also agree totally that it is the light with the dark that makes life wonderful!
Thanks for sharing – was like visiting.
Susan
Susan´s last blog ..Life Isn’t About Being Measured