Beauty-Finding Mission

Yesterday morning, I ended up on a beauty-finding mission.

I didn't know that's what it was when I walked out the door more bundled up than I've been in many months to seize the crisp energy of the cold air. It was such a strange joy to see frost on the grass of our front yard! I loved putting on my scarf and hat, and layering up items for my torso (NO REAL COATS UNTIL AFTER THANKSGIVING, I SAY!).

I feel like I digress, but that's not true . . . my noticing of all this meant the beauty-finding mission had started right when I walked out that door. I think I subconsciously know that this is a major purpose of my wanting to get out on walks, but it really crystalized to the forefront of my mind this morning. It came into focus when I stopped to film the well-distributed handful of bright yellow leaves that were still hanging onto a tree right at the edge of the water of Como Lake. They caught my attention with the way the jingled (ok, that's a sound descriptor, but I feel like that was the motion they were making too!).

When I began to film, I noticed right away that the quiet that had also caught me when I stopped to enjoy the jingling leaves had immediately fled in favor of a car zooming by, an electronic toy truck that a grown-ass man was operating nearby (I LOVE IT!), and some other noise that I cannot recall. At first, I was disappointed, thinking "this lovely, natural moment was just RUINED by all this man-made, technological noise!" After entertaining that thought, I quickly caught myself in its irony: part of what had made this moment so beautiful to me anyway was its relation, in my mind, to the Radiohead-inspired material I am currently working with in my dancemaking endeavors. And part of what I love about Radiohead is the energy-inducing, two-sides-of-the-same-coin clash I feel in their music and accompanying visuals between the natural and the induced.

After taking a moment with that thought, what I was filming became EVEN MORE beautiful. As did the rusty bench on a sun-faded dock in the foreground of rippling water on the lake. That sense of clash, or should I say complimentary opposition, is a delicious dichotomy in which I find so much beauty.

It was after filming the water that I realized I was on a beauty-finding mission this morning. Sometimes we go on fact-finding missions (got thinking about this in relation to needing to prep to vote!).  Sometimes we also need to go on beauty-finding missions. One of the things I love about (a phrase I find myself saying a lot about the subject at hand while I'm teaching :)) art is how its beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I love the subjective nature of it all, how one approach can be seen as beautiful by one and not another, how the same material can be interpreted in whole different way by different people. This is MY kind of critical thinking :)

I know a big reason I love to go on walks alone at the top of a fresh day is because my clear mind and the perpetual motion 1) makes my body feel good, and 2) allows my clear mind space to wander, which 3) often unlocks some potential solves for my various new and ongoing internal conflicts (i.e. fodder of an engagement human always trying her best/ for better). I also know a big reason I love to go on walks alone at the top of a fresh day is because I love to find beauty (and let it find me). That last reason was just in particularly clear focus this lovely, crisp morning.

Beauty-finding. Finding beauty. Letting beauty find you.

It IS everywhere.

All the time :)