Beauty

I don’t wear much makeup.  I don’t really believe in it. I am afraid of trying too hard to be beautiful. But I have two shades of eyeshadow from my wedding that I absolutely love.  I look forward to putting them on because some genius marketing guru decided to put quotations on the inside of the case to allure literary nerds such as myself.

The lighter of the two reads as follows:

“let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.” -jane austen

I tend to be someone whose pen was full my own depression.  I  have thought that our curse in life was that, as humans, we could only ever catch a second or two of true beauty.  We are granted moments that taste so sweet on the tongue just before we are plunged back into despair. At times, I believe that those moments when everything is lined up are exactly when you can expect everything to collapse.  The beauty destroyed as soon as you notice it.  

For me the darker things tend to muck up the bright spots.  But, taking my cue from Jane Austen, I determined that this should no longer be so.  This determination enabled me to realize that my week has been full of bright spots. 

Yesterday, I came home from my Saturday morning tutoring  and launched into a narrative of events for my husband when he stopped me.

“You have comments,” he said.

My jaw dropped, “What?”

“You have comments AND a follower.”

I ran to the computer, laughing with joy.   I read and reread your insightful and encouraging comments. It took conscious effort not to be afraid that this was only a fluke, that soon I’d find angry insults categorizing my faults.  Instead, I sat in awe of such a small but beautiful moment in my writing journey.       

Today, I found another luminous example combatting my self-doubt,  I rediscovered my writing notebook .  I’ve had this one for about a year.  It is still not completely filled and usually that is all I notice, my failure.  Today, however, I sat down and read my notebook.  I really read what I had written.  And to my shock, it was beautiful.  Not perfect, but enough to inspire me.  And I got an idea of what to do next, I want to organize my multitudinous entries on my life and polish some of the poems I found.  It was like discovering gold, inside of myself.  

My advice for the week ahead? 

 “let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.” -jane austen

and read old journals- it will blow your mind.