ugliness and beauty
it frightens me how affected i can be by the weather. if there is sun, i can handle hardship and things not going according to plan, like yesterday, for example.
and then there are days like today, when no matter what i do, it just feels wrong. unfulfilling. whether i try to run errands in the nasty drizzle, go drink coffee, go home and eat, read, fall asleep. it all just feels heavy, and i find myself wanting to cry over the stories i read, about how children dont experience nature anymore, about the impossible desire to make a difference in an ugly and unfair world.
i feel empty and restless, unable to focus on things i wanted to get done today. no one to see, nowhere to be.
i finally went out on my bike for about an hour as the last light was fading from the dull gray sky. stood on the bathurst bridge, one of my favorite sites in the city, and thought about what an ugly world we have made for ourselves. physically and spiritually. we seek out art and beauty in the ruined buildings in the cranes that spot the skyline in the concrete and smog, because we need beauty. if it isnt there we will seek it anyway, within the cracks and the slime. but the truth is that what we have made is ugly. an ugly world and ugly lives, and the only cure i know is this empty useless thing called art. for beauty and pleasure to overrule economics and utility. to just stop working so hard for so little, making ugly things for people to buy with the money they earned making ugly things for people to buy.
bathurst bridge on a nicer day.
Biking helps. i feel my body and the wind and the pavement beneath me, and i think about these things. every wave of anguish and hopelessness i look at in turn and say why do i feel this? why do i feel this today, just because the sun is gone? i poke at it at prod and i dont really have any good answers and i still fear winter more than anything. but by the time im home ive accepted that some days the world is just grey and ugly and theres nothing you can do about it.
what kills me is that even on those days there are people playing baseball at dusk, hipdeep in a sea of white fog and it looks like a movie, unreal. a girl on the street looks like lucie, the fairy-girl who always turned up at times like these with wonder in her pocket. im riding im moving im still alive i still feel. thats art too.
and then there are days like today, when no matter what i do, it just feels wrong. unfulfilling. whether i try to run errands in the nasty drizzle, go drink coffee, go home and eat, read, fall asleep. it all just feels heavy, and i find myself wanting to cry over the stories i read, about how children dont experience nature anymore, about the impossible desire to make a difference in an ugly and unfair world.
i feel empty and restless, unable to focus on things i wanted to get done today. no one to see, nowhere to be.
i finally went out on my bike for about an hour as the last light was fading from the dull gray sky. stood on the bathurst bridge, one of my favorite sites in the city, and thought about what an ugly world we have made for ourselves. physically and spiritually. we seek out art and beauty in the ruined buildings in the cranes that spot the skyline in the concrete and smog, because we need beauty. if it isnt there we will seek it anyway, within the cracks and the slime. but the truth is that what we have made is ugly. an ugly world and ugly lives, and the only cure i know is this empty useless thing called art. for beauty and pleasure to overrule economics and utility. to just stop working so hard for so little, making ugly things for people to buy with the money they earned making ugly things for people to buy.
bathurst bridge on a nicer day.
Biking helps. i feel my body and the wind and the pavement beneath me, and i think about these things. every wave of anguish and hopelessness i look at in turn and say why do i feel this? why do i feel this today, just because the sun is gone? i poke at it at prod and i dont really have any good answers and i still fear winter more than anything. but by the time im home ive accepted that some days the world is just grey and ugly and theres nothing you can do about it.
what kills me is that even on those days there are people playing baseball at dusk, hipdeep in a sea of white fog and it looks like a movie, unreal. a girl on the street looks like lucie, the fairy-girl who always turned up at times like these with wonder in her pocket. im riding im moving im still alive i still feel. thats art too.