Beautiful surroundings are a joy. Beauty when only skin deep, even a scratch to the surface, can reveal darkness below the facade. It may be something ugly or it may be only a shadow that gives the brighter side of beauty it’s depth. When I look out of windows, whether here in my living room or the windows of a car or bus, I see the many layers of the surrounding beauty. Beauty not just in the natural world, or in cosy homes and shimmering tall buildings but in the faces of people passing by. Animated conversations, faces furrowed in thought, children playing - or maybe crying, young love embracing at bus stops and in parks. Even the quick flit and fly of a plain brown sparrow has it’s own beauty.
When all the beauties of the day soften into night, a different beauty emerges. It is the beauty of the dark, that quality that lies beneath the surface. A dark, night time beauty that trades in the beauty of the day for moon glow and star shine. As with all darkness, there can be dangers hidden in corners or on sidewalks. Maybe frightening, maybe even evil. Or maybe as innocent as the pine cone that falls in my path. To feel the beauty of the darkness, feel the cool silvered air on my skin, I slow down, alert and loving my beautiful surroundings.
“A man must dream a long time in order to act
with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.”
~ Jean Genet
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