Restless, you finish your morning muffin or your lunchtime sandwich; you count the hours until evening arrives and you call it a day on your files, your spreadsheets, your accountable tasks; you pace the confines of your home office or your den, or maybe you grab the leash to walk the dog one more time, and a few blocks farther than is your habit.
You text your kids to say hello because this week in particular you are painfully aware of life’s fragility and randomness, and you do this though you know they’re fine. You share with them the familiar details of this sparkling season – the crispness in the air that fills your lungs sweetly, the flamboyance of the fall foliage crystallizing your delight in crimson and burnt orange, your realization that the holidays will be here in a flash though summer seems as if it disappeared only days ago.
Something in you aches and you aren’t sure if it’s the absence of little faces and hands or even bigger ones, vying for the car keys.
You are convinced the shadowy tinge to these days and nights is tied up in stories that continue to roll across large screens and small, grim tales tangled in the greatest fear of any parent, in your own recollections of lost loved ones. And while you cannot listen or watch any longer as the death toll rises, you do.
Even the journalists are visibly affected.
You seek any source that will soothe or distract however briefly. You crave a respite, a salve, an oasis. You search out a beauty balm because beauty uplifts, transports, transforms. You know the solace of the favorite poem, the much loved painting, the musical passage that allows you to navigate gingerly back to your center.
Perhaps you reach for words when compelled to recharge. There is Pablo Neruda to depict human frailty, human complexity, and equally, resilience.
Perhaps you gaze at a portrait from an earlier generation – a face with beauty, yes, but also a reminder of a life that endured hardship and loss but never surrendered dignity or appreciation.
Perhaps you turn to abstraction – colors and line to cradle your confusion, the vigorous or leisurely painting over of impasto to invite the hand beyond surface texture – an experience of art so complete that it mutes the cacophony in your head each time the news replays its sorrow. You retreat to the tranquility of hushed tones or the vitality of vibrant ones.
You may choose the proximity of a magazine, grateful for its consistent capacity to offer pleasure in its images of home whether or not that home could ever be yours. And you page through its glossy photographs of lovely rooms, you skim the copy; your eye goes to whatever spot feels most restful and welcoming. You understand that what you’re searching for is exactly that – a haven – and you wish the same for those who are disoriented, distraught, despairing.
Then hopefulness flickers in the unanticipated appearance of words like these:
Kindness abounds in the dark city. Even where’s there’s light and power and hot coffee and hope and heat (above 28th now) – it feels like a dark city.
Desolation returns too swiftly:
But below 28th – shiver – it’s Anarchy.
So you rifle through drawers to find your most tender heart: your children’s faces as babies, boys with toothless grins, a lovable mutt of a dog, now gone – packets of moments you consider storing on shelves in water-tight boxes high up in your closet as though that could protect you from grief in some unpredictable future.
In all of this there is beauty and comfort, albeit bittersweet. You remain restless and pacing but the gratitude for what you have is its own sort of balm; you are aware that loving and giving are their own sort of balm; that history will live as we recount it, that kindness is a measure with no need of containment.
- Where do you take solace when you need it?
- Does beauty offer you consolation when you’re troubled?
- Does giving – helping others – give your life more purpose?
Note in this image of an award-winning kitchen, the family dog waits at the back door.
Image scanned from print issue of House Beautiful, November 2012, p. 140, Kitchen of the Month, Mount Kisco, NY, designed by Young Huh, photographed by John M. Hall
Detail from painting by artist Steven Seinberg, with permission of the artist, photographed by yours truly.
Lovely post – I find solace in my little world with all the things I love surrounding me.
It certainly does offer consolation and I am so grateful for all the blessings around me – I hope to spend more time helping and giving to others once I have taken care of my own.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Gorgeous words from Goethe. Thank you, Vicki Lee.
Beautifully said, D.A. I too feel utterly helpless as my family is suffering. They are just a few hundred miles away, but it may as well be thousands. Admonishing us not to come, but sounding so very tired. So I think we are going to make a Costco run tonight and head on down tomorrow. Lend some moral support, if not anything else. The one thing that gives me solace is a photograph I have in my mind (it’s in storage inCali) of my then 2-year-old son standing next to my husband in the ocean at the Jersey Shore. It seems as though a big, cold wave has just come by because my son looks as though he was caught by surprise: laughing. A wonderful moment in a place that will never be the same.
Oh, D, thank you for quoting me. I held it together until today. Then walked uptown miles again. Got to the gym. Swam and showered and let it all go – the hot water and sweet scent of grapefruit bodywash laid on by the club (who had to ration towels because of all of us refugees from downtown coming up here to find solace and hot water and sweet scented grapefruit bodywash and heat, did we mention the delights of heat, and electric light) and then I read your tweets and your post and suddenly started to cry (dark glasses on) by the raw juice machine in the club’s lobby.
Kindness melts all fear.
Beauty soothes all troubled souls.
Thank you for being there.
Gloria (+ sophia) xxx
A beautiful post. I find my solace in music, in a visit to the art museum, in the laughter of children.
Beautiful words – like these – are a balm to me on my low days, as are certain pieces of music and certain works of art. Sometimes, though, I find the best balm to be an amiable companion, not someone who’s intent on fixing my problem per se, but someone who’s there to listen and makes me feel heard. (Though I am not a pet person, I have seen that dogs, especially – like that cute guy in the picture above – can play that role with their steadfast loyalty.)
BLW, this is a wonderful post. Beautifully written and so timely. I crave connecting with my kids during times like these, especially since they’re so far away. I’m keenly aware that my family is scattered and sometimes that’s a very unsettling feeling for me. I look around at those with family living close-by and wonder why they don’t appreciate that they are at arm’s reach. I would give just about anything to have my kids be able to drop in to our house unexpected and unannounced.
Words, music, a close friend… it seems they soothe many of us.
tg – I do hope you are hanging in, and that light and heat and some semblance of “normalcy” will be restored soon.
Lisa, boy do I hear you. At these times, the distance between us and those we love most dearly is more painful. Naturally, when they come bustling back into the house with all their chaos and commotion, we roll our eyes and shake our heads and worry in that particularly parental way.
But we know they’re safe. We see them and hear them. The world rights itself.
Hi D.A,
Your words express inner feelings magnificently as always. But what you say brings me farther in reflection. Solace from beauty, or thoughts directed to the loved ones? I think it works for most of us, but hey, up to a certain point only. I mean it depends on how distressing is the situation and how messy it is getting around.
What is my point exactly? When power really goes down for good, everything goes down! And the little of humanity we have goes down first. Everything becomes edgy, messy, scary, violent and dangerous. A society with a state both helping and protecting (whatever mad Republicans or Tea Party’s say against it) it’s done for that! It’s here to make you feel safe in guaranteed boundaries.
I know that Sandy just gave to New Yorkers a disturbing snippet of what it could be all about if things should go like that in the dark, on a longer duration. But does anything ever really teach something to humans (and particularly Americans) – allow me to doubt it.
To those who would want to feel deeper in their mind and flesh out what is waiting there, in case we mess it all up (and Fukushima largely proved that we can), I would advise them to see the stunning film of Michael Haneke: “The time of the wolf”. M. Haneke doesn’t say which kind of disaster has brought the country with no power, scarce source of food and contaminated water, he just shows the result of it, and how it brings humans so fast in worse behaviors than wolves ones.
Is there any consciousness of the real threat in the USA? I don’t think so. As I said before, Americans are not even 5% of the world population but still consume 25% of the total resources and produce 25% of the total pollution. Is anyone conscious that applying the USA model to the whole world (and sadly many nations dream to do that) comes down to draining out everything the planet has to give in no more than 2 or 3 decades, and destroying life massively (including human ones) by huge devastating pollutions and a global warming that can’t be stopped anymore?
What do we have in front of that? Denial. The presidency campaign just demonstrated how much pollution and global warming was not a topic to be dealt with, and America which is the first or second (maybe China took over) planet polluter, still didn’t sign the Kyto Protocol on greenhouse gases emissions.
Instead of that, and it’s even more concerning, we can see Americans who, by the millions, are now anticipating the world that shows Michael Haneke in The Time of the Wolf. They are called the Survivalists or the Preppers and their behavior is so American. They consider everything as a threat and whether the threats are imaginary or real (as the weather devastation increased by global warming), they consider that state has no role to play in that.
So, instead of looking a solution altogether with other Americans to prevent the threats from happening. They prepare in all selfishness to survive alone gathering food and guns to be the ones making it against all others when the disaster happens.
Hummm … D.A, do you think “beauty” will be of any solace when these times will come? 🙁
As one who believes it’s critical to vote more than immediate (appearance of) self-interest, but longer term, bigger picture, sanity (if for no other reason than our children and grandchildren), what do you think I think, François?
Your words resonate with me today. A beautiful post!
Thank you, Ayala.
This is one of your posts where the words will stay with me for a long time and I will come back to it when they falter.
Thanks for ringing the bells…
xo,
H
I think you align with my view point D.A., as we so often do. But it was just a way for me to bring it to the bigger picture, which is so often missed in USA. But don’t mistake, I’m not blind to the fact that the whole Western world misses that big picture, France included.
Up to recent colonialist times, and until even more recent post colonialism, when we supported the worse dictators in all parts of the world, as long as they were letting us pillage their natural resources, the Western world behaved (and still does) as if the whole planet is its property. But it’s not, it never was, and the rest of the world will show that to us. In short, we can’t go on taking whatever we want wherever we want. And we can’t go on endangering the world as we have in ever manner, economically, ecologically, militarily etc…
Beautifully written. I’ve read it twice and may come back to read it again!
Thank you, Debi. Lovely of you to say so. 🙂
This is so lovely. You are so brilliant with words, evoking such familiar and universal aches, joys, longings, sensory feelings. Who is the woman in the portrait/painting? Someone familiar to you? She’s beautiful.
Thank you, Barb. That’s my grandmother. Much loved. Her portrait hangs not far from where I sleep. There are a few other images of her in some posts. (Black and white photos, 1920s I believe; on my Pinterest board.)
I just want to wake up in the morning and let your words wash over me. How is that painting by Seinberg even possible?
It’s incredible in person. That’s only a detail. Its surfaces are very thick and rich, scratched through with lines of poetry from Octavio Paz.
Beautiful words. Beautiful post.
My healing salve, for me, are paintings, better in person or some I have hanging on my walls (or set up aginst them). I can also lose myself in Pinterest paintings too.
Something “in them” calms my breathing and brings me full circle back to center, myself. I am grateful that I can “feel” this way…