beholder

I felt it begin last night.  Rising to the surface, a deep unsettling.

An acute awareness of a desperate lacking.

This morning I woke up, bound and determined.  There was an ache in the deepest part of me.  To find beauty.  

I haven't created in quite some time.  Haven't held a camera in my hands, looked through different eyes, attempted to capture the beauty of the world with a quick blink of a shutter, an adjusted aperture.  Today would be different.  I would find this beauty my heart was longing for.

I got in my car and started driving.  I stopped a few times, but the camera felt heavy and awkward in my hands.  Beautiful colors everywhere.  Trees, fences, barns, leaves.  Fall is in full force in Kentucky.  Surely I could find this coveted beauty on the back country roads.

I turned onto Russell Cave and drove.  A red sports car cut me off in traffic.  The driver was wearing sunglasses, and I heard in my heart Someone say, follow me. 

I just drove and drove.  Following the red car.  The scenery was beautiful, breathtaking, pure, and unadulterated.  But eyes were not satisfied.  There was an ache in my heart, and each mile made it worse.  Throbbing.

And then the red car disappeared.  Over a hill.  I crested the same hill and could no longer see the red car anywhere.

So I pulled into a driveway and sat for a minute.  This was not where I was supposed to be.

Like every epiphany I have ever had, it bubbled up within me until I was smiling like a fool.

I knew where I needed to be.  I knew where this quest for beauty was calling me.

I drove.  Turned left then right then left again.

Even as I pulled up to the curb I could hear their voices.  Screaming my name, running out from their yards and driveways, waving their arms.  Little girls jumped into my arms as I got out of my car.  Bigger boys swaggered over and pretended not to care.  I hugged them anyway.

I began to take pictures.  Of their sweet faces.  In between hugs and kisses and the constant bickering and running around.

The joy in my heart bubbled up into my eyes.

But I didn't stay there long.  The call for beauty was intertwined intimately with a demand to be brave.  To seek it out where others fail to acknowledge it.  To go deeper, to get closer.

So I drove some more.  Through the familiar ghettos and four way stops.

I tried to cheat.  I knocked on a few doors, looking for children to take with me.  I couldn't do this alone.

Could I?

I heard them before I saw them.  The thump of the basketball.  The yells of boys older than I am used to.

I saw their shadows and their piles of clothes on the sidelines.

I meandered around.  To a dilapidated playground.  Covered with too much dirt and too many chains.

And then, with one deep breath, I approached them.  Knowing full well this was where I was supposed to be.

That in the pounding of the basketball, the soles of the Converse and Nikes, the sweatiness of high school boys, I would find what I was looking for.

They saw me.  After a few minutes they stopped playing.  I waved at them and told them to keep going. They laughed and I shouted after them to impress me.

Soon they were hovered over my shoulders, looking at images of themselves, which I'd captured.

Beauty, my friends, is in the eye of the beholder.

In sweet hugs and kisses.  In dark, dirty faces.  In unsullied moments of pride and youthfulness.

Anna, quit looking for beauty elsewhere.  Quit looking in all the wrong places.  You are wired to find beauty in people.  In children.  To dig out art from what is broken and forgotten.  Go get it.  And remind the world.