Got Your Back

–Got Your Back, Taos, New Mexico, April 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Monday, June 25th, 2007

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PRACTICE: I Find Beauty In – 10min

I find beauty in red, deep red the color almost of blood, blood running and deep inside, but dry blood, that turns light as if the oxygen has infused light. I find beauty in wide faces, clear skin, open expressions, the smile of my daughter. How she hasn’t yet grown in incisors and how when she smiles wide I see gaps on either end of her smile. How that makes her smile look deep like a laugh.

Beauty is something I find in odd little corners. I remember a labyrinth of streets in The Albaicín in Granada, stumbling across a vine-covered restaurant, how it seemed to grow into a wall, hidden and white, the cobblestone streets, the color of lavendar. I find beauty in the seeds of the pomegranate, that means “granada,” and I like that the shell of the fruit resembles a treasure chest, the seeds are gems glinting in sunlight.

Today, warm now and slower, slowing down, I find beauty in nothing, and I don’t mean that I find no beauty but rather *nothing* can be lovely. Nothing pressing, nothing pushing, just being. Beauty.

I find beauty in the mole above Mom’s lip. She had it taken off years ago, but always it was the mark I recognized, like a penguin who knows its child by its sound, I knew Mom by her beauty mark, her hair up in rollers and a bandana covering it, a cigarette hanging from her lip reminding me that she is tough, and those thin lips trembling with anger or love. Beauty.

-Writing practice from my notebook, June 2006.

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