“Cultivate beauty (aesthetic sense) for yourself and your loved ones. Beauty is not a matter of money and consumption. It resides in all things, primarily in the small details of life”
— Dominique Venner
The taste of your lips as we kiss
Our son’s smile
The laughter shared even in my own company
The discovery of a new book
The Moon’s reflection on the water at night
A walk through the woods.
Flower and the wind through my hair
Chasing rainbows to see where they end
A new adventure beckoning
Landing in bed at the end of the day
Most animals, pure in their intention.
These are what bring me joy
Nothing major
yet in a way they all are
with no price but my heart.
— G A Rosenberg
“Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
The Moon edges towards full. Wind knocks everything askew. They represent my overpowering emotions and scattered thoughts. A cat gives birth to three kittens, one of them unfortunately still-born. Too bad some of my ideas never make it past the point of expression. I offer a white flower as the only thing that I could find as beautiful as her innocence. It starts to rain as the sky expresses the sadness I keep buried within. I see a star fall and I feel hope.
The sun rises and I know it will all be better.
Blessings, G
“The slow arrow of beauty. The most noble kind of beauty is that which does not carry us away suddenly, whose attacks are not violent or intoxicating (this kind easily awakens disgust), but rather the kind of beauty which infiltrates slowly, which we carry along with us almost unnoticed, and meet up with again in dreams; finally, after it has for a long time lain modestly in our heart, it takes complete possession of us, filling our eyes with tears, our hearts with longing.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Your smile appeared
last night in my dream
like the one that Alice saw
combined with Mona Lisa elegance
so much like the one I’ve seen for years
yet last night
I noticed
The appreciation sending heartfelt echoes
back through time
Never was the sunrise brighter
carrying past gift and future promises
in its wake.
— G A Rpsenberg
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Vision of the Burning of the False by G A Rosenberg
“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
You flower before me
so beautiful, so unique
like nothing I’ve seen before.
Ordinary beauty is just that
a comment on a sunset
or a mountain
but you are strange and wonderful
To compare to anything else
seems a betrayal of the quality
that exists solely in your being.
— G A Rosenberg
To truly appreciate beauty, it helps to appreciate uniqueness. For something to stand out, it must be different from the every day. The more we can love the unique and the strange, the more beauty we can perceive in the world. It is only when we abhor the different that our lives start losing hue and our worlds fade towards a uniform grey.
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
In a Strange Forest Their Dance Is Witnessed by G A Rosenberg
“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
I’ve learned to laugh at my pain
the exquisite agony
of healing echoes of the past
I save my tears for beauty
naked bodies
of water, forest and human
the kindness done just because
service accepted and given
without a balance
Your eyes in firelight and your skin in moonlight
any of these can make me weep
out of joy, out of love and out of gratitude
tears heal the laughter
laughter the tears
we find balance in life’s stream.
–G A Rosenberg
“Anything that stands out in darkness becomes beautiful”
— Randall Wolfe
In pitch blackness I awoke
no sound no movement
a disquieting peace
broken by the sound of your breath
and the beating of my heart.
Still, I was still
yet blind and then
turning towards you
I saw your eyes and the curve of your face
and was enraptured
I felt your smile
as it mirrored mine
In moonlight or daylight you shine like the sun
but in the kiss of darkness
you become my world
— G A Rosenberg
 
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Spherical Awakening by G A Rosenberg
Reaching Through to Make the Abstract Real by G A Rosenberg
“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
― Confucius
Today on my FB feed I saw something that troubled me a bit. A friend reposted a picture of a girl with Down Syndrome that her brother had posted. The brother was upset that the girl did not consider herself beautiful and he wanted to convince her she was. The friend (well acquaintance, you know how these FaceBook things go) demanded to know why people think its ok to lie to others and that the girl knew the truth so why should he let her think otherwise. This struck me as wrong on so many levels. Yes, the fact that aesthetics is subjective is a cliché at best yet even without that being a consideration it occurred to me what a narrow definition of beauty my acquaintance had. I believe that any combination of features can produce beauty. It may be a smile or a moment of strength through adversity that shines in the eye or even sorrow. The prettiest person can give ‘ugly’ looks.
Even beyond people you can find beauty anywhere. A raging fire or gunshots in the night can appear beautiful. A deadly micro-organism seen through a microscope may as well. I don’t know but if its between looking for the beauty in something or seeing a marred surface, I know what I would choose every time.
Blessings, G
“The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity – then we will treat each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a different perspective.”
— David Suzuki
If David Suzuki’s premise is true and our view of the world shapes our treatment of it, then how true is it about the way we see ourselves? If we see ourself as people whom the world treats badly and who never gets what they want then what motivation do we have to work on ourselves. However, if we see ourselves as a work in progress and believe that success is possible through growth and perseverance and that abundance is present and unrealized then maybe, just maybe we can find something either beautiful or joyful in each day to appreciate.
After listening to a friend of mine tell me each day for several weeks about how rough her life was and being largely negative in her view, I asked her to do me a favour. I asked her if each day she would consciously find one beautiful moment or image that passed her way and tell me about it. She reluctantly did this and after about a week it seemed to have a profound difference on her outlook in general.
It may not effect everyone’s outlook in a dramatic way yet I have found for myself as well that once I make the space for beauty or joy or perhaps its just for appreciation, something wonderful comes along to fill it.
Blessings, G
“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.”
― Marcel Proust
There are a few truisms that have lodged themselves into my brain that I may have to unlearn some day. One of them is that Innocence is the price we pay for wisdom. Is it possible to be both innocent and wise? Perhaps… tho it seems that in order to learn some of the more painful life lessons opened to me I had to become aware of my own capacity for ugliness as well as beauty… and the capacity for the world to hold both as well. Of course I also learned that what may be ugly from one angle in one context can be exquisite from another and to appreciate it all. Of course on this journey to wisdom I am still learning. That may be the most beautiful fact of all.
Blessings, G
“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
A youth in rebellion runs
racing with the night
and my heart races as well
at the sheer beauty
and the courage to experience self
if only in the negation
of what he’s known before
I watch torn between
the wish to be the sail
that enables his ship to catch the wind
and the need at times to be the anchor
When my own ship sailed
and I went racing off
it is those anchor moments
I cursed and later treasured
and those sail moments
to know that they believed
that I accepted gracelessly at the time
but now help me be.
He runs now by day and night
in full impulsive glory
Even rudderless he’ll make it through
May he shine among the stars.
— G A Rosenberg
Masqued Abstract by G A Rosenberg 
Ecstasy by G A Rosenberg 
