A couple scraps of paper with some words I wrote while visiting Starbucks a few years ago has been lying on my bookshelf since I rediscovered them recently. I want to throw the paper away, but not the words. So I'll type them here, even though the note doesn't necessarily reflect my current style or perspective. I still like it :)
The world around me seems especially beautiful. It is one of those moment when I sense that the world is awash in wonder and beauty, like a long stream despite debris of ugliness or sordid evil. In the coffee shop, light catches, apricot colored, in the large bowl-like light fixtures. Against the gray wall of windows, a woman's red curl of hair looks like some work of art. The black man on his phone is a living sculpture--dark against the gray glass and behind the black tables. A lovely voice sings meditatively to a guitar's strumming, and the very leaves on the sidewalk are worlds of wonder--their pale undersides covered with a bright river delta of red veins, their snakeskin surface studded with the gems of last night's dew.
It's odd how different days we see different things. And which vision shall we choose to believe?
The world around me seems especially beautiful. It is one of those moment when I sense that the world is awash in wonder and beauty, like a long stream despite debris of ugliness or sordid evil. In the coffee shop, light catches, apricot colored, in the large bowl-like light fixtures. Against the gray wall of windows, a woman's red curl of hair looks like some work of art. The black man on his phone is a living sculpture--dark against the gray glass and behind the black tables. A lovely voice sings meditatively to a guitar's strumming, and the very leaves on the sidewalk are worlds of wonder--their pale undersides covered with a bright river delta of red veins, their snakeskin surface studded with the gems of last night's dew.
It's odd how different days we see different things. And which vision shall we choose to believe?
This reminds me of a modern counterpart to Thomas Traherne's prose meditation beginning "The corn was orient and immortal wheat." It is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteDo you often write in coffee shops? I have a poetry-friend here in Arlington who will go to coffee shops for the express and deliberate purpose of writing! (I think I write best at home, in the wee hours. Case in point! Note the time-stamp.)
I'll have to look up that meditation! Yes, I like writing at coffee shops, and certainly go there for the atmosphere, not the coffee. It's best if I can find the right table and when there's a nice hum of conversation going on around me.
DeleteBut the wee hours are a rich time to write, too, though I usually sleep through them. There's something timeless about them, isn't there?