Beautiful World

There is so, so much that is beautiful in this world.

My work, my life, my dream, is about helping people. About taking something that's not so great, and healing it. Sometimes all I can do is listen to someone hurting, but contrary to the implied definition, even that's not a passive experience. Unless I'm having a selfish day, I'm always looking for something to give, something to do, some way to help.

Until the moment when I break out of the trees, and my words are stolen by a painted sky, over a forest so dark it's been reduced to two dimensions. The lake carries deep secrets of beauty under a glassy surface, a surface that permits no entry because disturbing it would be beyond criminal. There's a line of amber in the middle of the shadows, revealing that part of that flat black treeline is an island. Beauty and darkness blending into something beyond the definitions of each.

The morning I go out for a walk in the mist on the shore. The waves are crashing, running in and out as though searching for something in the gravel. The brightly wet rocks slide from under my weight, and the sky is impassively gray, too great to be aware of the tiny crustaceans that skitter and slide higher up the shore, demanding safety. The whole world seems to be waiting for something, and maybe it's just for me to leave, so that it can celebrate in its riotous joy. A promise of a terrific storm later. Can a storm have emotion? It seems to promise beauty and emotion, but in such a way to defy both terms.

The hushed open-air cathedral of the trees, with the long grass that invites all and tells nothing. High enough on the hills that the wind is your companion, and only a hawk soars over you. Dusty leaves enjoy their new settings, and the smell of the woods dances tantalizingly past your eyes. Lying down in that long soft grass, the earth accepting your weight, gazing up at the tall pale trees. There's a song here from before we knew notation, and so we'll never be able to take down the notes. Elusive and welcoming. Beautiful.

Only fifteen feet from the surface, and it's a totally different world. The floor is carved by a different master, the ceiling is in constant motion. A valley so deep that darkness seems to bleed out of it, reaching to pull you in and hide you forever, whispering the secrets that will make you forget the sun. Startled life that darts away from your form into better hiding. Sound you can't remember when you break the surface again. Beautiful. Beautiful.

There's nothing I can do, no words I can say. This was a place where I'm not going to be serving, where I'm not going to be helping or making anything better. The only thing I can possibly do here is view, drink, perceive. I'll be something of a holding receptacle for this moment.

That's all I can do - sit, listen with my eyes. Why? I won't have the words to tell anyone else about it later. I can't capture the sound, the taste of the air and convert it. I'm not a painter or a sculptor, to be able to convey this. Even the act of taking a picture would seem to interrupt something, to turn the focus back on the little person down here.

I'm not sure I know why. Maybe it's something I need to see to be all right. Maybe it's just because to see this and walk away without taking it in would be completely wrong. Maybe I'll be able to come back here and bring someone else with me. Maybe it's something that will teach me to love better, somehow. I don't know. I just know that this is beautiful, and I need to take it in.