There's a strange beauty in everything, I tell myself, but, realistically, it's more like almost everything.
Obvious Beauty
*stark spindly branches against an orange or blue or pink or grey or blazing white sky
*Muybridge's stills of a horse in motion
*any painting by Vincent Van Gogh
Subtle Beauty
*the pattern left behind from the staples and the remaining corners of papers on telephone poles
*19th century sidewalks in 21st century settings
*sounds of a piano being practiced, possibly badly, wafting from an open window
Challenging Beauty
*the sparkle affect of shatterproof glass on cracked, weedy pavement
*bleached out, naked trees (along 80 west between Davis and Dixon) juxtaposed against lush rows of a summer orchard
*a three-legged dog during the morning walk, carefully balanced, sniffing a bright yellow fire hydrant
Is it selfish to try to find beauty everywhere? Doing so helps to give, if not meaning, then some kind of order to this world, some kind of triumph against all odds, like the proverbial weed growing through the proverbial crack in the proverbial sidewalk. Sometimes beauty in the face of so much ugliness seems like the most meaningful "fuck you" to everything that oppresses and seeks to annihilate.
