Passing Beauty By

I have been sad since returning from my grandfather's funeral. The open casket caught my heart unawares. The tears streaming down my father's face spun me round. The grief surrounding me became my grief. The tide swept me, and the quantity of wine and single malt scotch I consumed did nothing to center my spirit.

And, then I discovered this article by Gene Weingarten. It rightfully won the Pulitzer Prize.

"If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that -- then what else are we missing?"

What unexpected beauty do we miss every day?
Here is Joshua Bell in the "right frame" playing and talking about Chaconne by Bach:



How much beauty have I rushed past today? Yesterday?
How often do I forget that we are blessed?

Coincidentally, I went to see Brett Dennen play last night, here in Louisville. He filled the room with grace and joy. It was beautiful.

Link Spree.

I visited a blog I found in LOM's follow-list, Color Me Katie, (who never fails to inspire me with her random acts of color) where I saw her High Five Escalator post, which took me to the Improv Everywhere site, where I relived my own Melbourne Fringe Festival memories of years ago, and thought of my friend Meg's project Display Purposes Only which I haven't forgotten that she sent me shirts for and I never, ever, ever did a damn thing with them. Oh, and I thought about being naked with 4.500 other people, which was still some of the most fun I have ever had. Thinking about Meg made me visit Land of Meg, which made me learn more about the blogger who made her think about Meg Later, Now. This made me curious about one of his twitters, which took me to this guy, whom I'm still confused about. Which also took me to Wunderings, which took me to Swiss Miss, who I spent quite a bit of time with, before she dropped me off at charity:water, which made me wonder what PJ thinks of this kind of water activism. Which made me look at their Twestival, which I forwarded to some people in the online marketing department at work, because I hadn't seen Twitter used quite that way before. Twitter always makes me think of Facebook statuses. Especially since I read this New York Times Magazine article about them last Sunday (which I found pretty unsatisfying for an interesting topic, but I still am thinking about the article, mostly the parts that were left unwritten).

Which made me check my friends' statuses - which made me notice that the quarterly journal that my poet-friend Mark edits has been updated, which made me read the work. Especially this work whose words and images were so powerful and made me think so deeply that I just didn't even know who to send them to... or why. Which made me think about the Newspaper Blackout poems of Austin Kleon, a link to which I posted for my poet-friend, and an image of one I sent to my newspaper man(see above). Oh, and I forwarded a link to another to a colleague as sound advice for a marriage.

All this linking managed to keep me in between productive thoughts for most of the day, in a zen-like state of surfer's bliss. Oh, and I changed my image on Skype, courtesy of wikipedia - Rocinante - Steinbeck's caravan. Delicious.