The Beauty that I have experienced since May haunts me. Every day...every hour of my existence now is overwhelmed with thoughts and memories of this. They are countless - more than one person could possibly remember yet too many to possibly forget. On this website I have given you descriptions of only a small sample, and my words for those chosen few have been pitifully inadequate.
It is a Beauty that words simply cannot capture. I could enlist the talents of history's greatest writers, the people who paint vividly and fantastically with words, yet they too would fail miserably to express this Beauty.
Impossible to encapsulate - to define - to describe.
This Beauty is unlike anything I have ever experienced. I have experienced a lot in my 26 years...however this is something wholly different and unique from everything else in my life.
I thought the sunset in Florence last summer was beautiful. I thought hearing "It's a Wonderful World" in Cologne was beautiful. Paris at dusk. Cinque Terre at...well, anytime of the day. The Alhambra, Capri, the Swiss Alps, the Grand Place in Brussels. Chapel Hill on a crisp autumn evening.
Viewed separately, in their own right, these things are in fact beautiful. But life is not lived in a vacuum. If you lose your job of 15 years, this seems a tragedy. However, if the following month you lose your spouse to cancer…certainly you will cease to think of your unemployment as a tragedy. For losing your job is nothing compared to losing your loved one.
Such is true here, as well.
All of it - everything up until now pales in this Beauty's light. There are many things that I have thought to be beautiful in my life. But life is not lived in a vacuum. And the scales have just been radically altered.
I have just stepped out of the light from the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced. I fear – with every piece of my broken heart – that it will be the most beautiful thing I will ever see in my life. I fear that because it has passed. Because if that is true, then I must live the rest of my days knowing that I will never see a beauty quite as fantastic, quite as radiant and pure and innocent as this Beauty.
And that breaks my heart.
Again.
3 comments:
The irony of life is that we get what we expect. If you expect the rest of your life to pale in comparison to the last six months of your life, then it most assuredly will. But remember, you made that decision when you pinned the wholeness of your life on one experience. Good luck with that. I don't think I can watch your self-destruction any longer.
Irony? Wouldn't that be more like, what the fuck, haven't you ever heard of bad luck... - The Rapture / Get Myself Into It
No wait, thats something else...
2 things wrong with that Christa...
first, we get what we expect?? wow, i want to live in your world, because that sure as hell ain't mine. very few times do i get what i expect. you think i expected this to happen? any of it? i didn't expect to meet this girl, i didn't expect to fall in love with her nor for her to fall in love with me. i didn't expect it to end like this. i didn't expect to end up living a part of my life in Rome, or teaching english, or to have more pimples at 26 than i did at 16. again, i'd love to find the world where we get what we expect...
second, i didn't pin anything on this experience. i didn't wake up one day and think "okay, i'm gonna give my all to Valeria and if it fails, well, i'm done. but hopefully it'll work out". i'm not an idiot. but somewhere along the way it became much more important and beautiful and meaningful than i ever could have EXPECTED.
i'm sorry, perhaps my faith isn't strong enough. perhaps i'm not quite as perfect as i should be.
excuse me.
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