Finding Peace
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Photo by Cara Brostrom.
Photo and paint by me.
This is my challenge to you today:
Dare to find peace in places you least expect it... the middle of the grocery store aisle, the crowded center of a city street intersection, the corner of a run-down alley.
Lately I enjoy the practicing of seeing art even in the ugly the broken down, the grit.
Chaos, clutter, pain: sometimes we must practice through them.
Even shards of glass have their own allure, their own wild beauty.
This poem says it best:
BY ALICE FULTON
It takes faith—this tripping through the mixed blessings
of debris with eyes peeled for the toxic
toothpaste green of copper keystones.
On good days Carborundum-bladed saws free sublime
objective blossoms; stained glass
hangs rescued and suspended
like frozen scarves on lines
behind indigents at barrel fires;
granite cherubs wearing crowbar marks
lie abandoned at her door.
After the wrecking ball
she loads her truck with crushed iotas
because cast marble dust's more durable than solid cuts.
Only occasionally, gargoyles blur
under the pressure of her gaze
as if vision were itself corrosive.
Then deco mirrors hold her
as they catacomb the warehouse walls,
and clinging at the empty
gilding of a door, she wants
a shower and lather of pumice
to melt the gritty casing of her
nakedness. How small she looks
beside what she has saved.
