Everything is so beautiful, I thought as I was driving to work yesterday. Everything is so beautiful.
It’s already green season in Sonoma County. We’ve gotten so much rain that spring has come early. Everything is green and lush, the mustard flowers and acacia trees are in full bloom, and suddenly everywhere there are lambs haphazardly running through the fields as if they’re drunk, toppling into each other.
A few minutes after I thought Everything is so beautiful, I glanced to my left, and through the gray clouds awash with sunlight, I saw a huge rainbow, so big I couldn’t see where it was going, let alone where it was going to end.
The Defiant Hope of Beauty
I am most myself in nature. I feel the most alive and at peace when I am gazing out on the natural wonder of this world, when the air is fresh and the flowers are sighing open and the bees are tumbling through the brush (at a safe distance of course).
When I am in nature, I am selfless. I am part of everything and everything is part of me. I am no longer my gender or my race, my set of identifiers, my career choice. I am untethered from what has been assigned to me, free from any outside gaze.
There is no past or future in the midst of such beauty. There is no then, there is only now. Time is a construct, suspended, in the fields and the hills, in watching the ducks bob down for food in the water that has gathered in a field beside the road I drive down every day.
A few weeks ago this glorified puddle was filled with ducks and Canadian geese, a parade of avian splendor, the two species blissfully swimming beside each other on the placid surface, babies following their mamas and fluffy plump goose and duck bottoms sticking up from below. I couldn’t help but smile every time I drove by.
The geese and many of the ducks are now gone, but a few stalwarts remain, idly paddling in this body of water that is neither pond nor puddle. Too small to be the first and too big to be the latter.
How can everything be so beautiful? How does life continue in the face of all we are weathering?
It’s February, a month when we celebrate Black history and culture (really all year long if you’re like me), and so it is also a time when I often think about the radical audacity of beauty and joy in the face of oppression.
When has hatred and violence ever prevented us from continuing to grow and thrive? When has the prevalence of bigotry and injustice extinguished our capacity for joy and healing? The answer is, never.
In the grand sweep of this life, in the cyclical nature of the seasons and social movements, we have never stopped. We have never died. Our leaders and heroes have been targeted and murdered, our daily lives marred by redlining and relegation, and still. We are here. The flowers still bloom. We still laugh and sing and dance. We must.
Beauty stops for no one, and the existence of tragedy does nothing to extinguish or dim the existence of riotous beauty.
We shouldn’t try to reconcile this duality, only accept it. Don’t ignore the yellow petals against the green grass in relief against the gray sky. See it all. Feel it all.
The Friday Finds
Action. Watch Black Lives Matter’s artist video series honoring the life and legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “not just as an iconic Civil Rights leader but as a human being full of love, joy, play, and healing.”
Listen. “I Am” by Beautiful Chorus.
Welcome magic and wonder
Brilliance and grace
Welcome joy, satisfaction
Pleasure and strength
Welcome essence, beauty, presence
Time, spirit, form, and space
Watch. American Fiction! I committed the cardinal sin of watching a film adaptation before reading the book (Erasure by Percival Everett), but I don’t care because the movie was PERFECT. A total 10/10. Expertly cast, darkly humorous, beautifully shot; the script is smart and sharp, the acting feels loose and real, the sets exquisitely lived-in. And you cannot top the cast: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, whew! Following a writer-professor named Monk, the film explores what “the Black experience” even means, and what happens when writers of color—and all of us—are pigeonholed by stereotypes.
Read. Black Friend: Essays by Ziwe! I’ve loved Ziwe ever since I watched the first episode of her eponymous Showtime series (now canceled, *tear), but I love her even more now after reading this observant, hilarious book of essays. A comedian and writer who has perfected the art of the uncomfortable interview, Ziwe is also a cultural critic of the highest order, unafraid to “go there.” Unputdownable!
Thank you for being here. See you soon.
In solidarity,
Emma