When You're Down . . .
Let your senses distract you💥
Many years ago I sat in my wise-woman/therapist’s office, leaking tears into a beautiful hand-painted cup. These sessions were held in her bright living room bursting with bookshelves, throw rugs, plants, and unlimited tea. (Once I asked her, mid-conversation, “How much tea do you drink in a day?” She laughed.)
Who knows what mood cyclone had me in its eye that day. I might have had notions about wasting my life. I might have been heartbroken. I might have felt like a singular dried-up maple leaf riding the wind curls of life all by my lonesome. 🎻
Oh, the all-consuming SADNESS. Then, in the middle of reaching for a tissue, I was distracted by something pretty:
“Where did you get this tea cup?” I asked. It looked like this:
One thing I loved about my wise woman was how she could shift conversational focus with me: from the myth of Psyche playing itself out in a person’s life, to a fetching teacup. That day, we took a quick turn away from despair, and for a good 15 minutes we discussed where she bought her teacups. My tears cleared. Next, we expounded on our devotion to beautiful tea/coffee cups and the significance of The Vessel, which was the topic of my wise woman’s doctoral thesis.
At the end of our session, my wise woman said something that stayed with me.
“This weekend, go somewhere, a gallery, and spend time gazing at a beautiful object. A vase. Put yourself in front of something beautiful.”
I nodded, said OK, all the while thinking: What a fucking nut job. No way was I going to find some random vase at a crafts museum and gaze into it. What the …?
And yet, this moment in time with her—the tea cup, the vessel convo, the vase Rx—has stayed with me over time. I think about it, I refer to it, and it follows me around, like a little daemon, reminding me to be open to and present for that which exalts the senses, and expands the mind and spirit.
I now know deep in my bones and squiggly cells that being with an experience of Oh-wow beauty/awe/intrigue is always a state of perfection, even if it lasts for half a second. I could be walking down the street absolutely CONSUMED by a state of anxiety of despair and be surprised by the most crimson wild rose bush and in that moment of noticing, there’s a note of “oh wow” and for that “oh wow” moment the anxiety/despair doesn’t exist. THIS IS LIFE PEOPLE. Experiencing the moment and nothing else.
I don’t want to say that Beauty is a distraction, but I do like distracting—or shocking myself—out of a Mood with something that wakes up the senses.
FOR EXAMPLE
If you’re looking for some ways to exalt the senses, here are a few ways Beauty has flipped up my sensory skirt of late:
I love the Google Arts and Culture app, which shows a fresh piece of artwork from a museum somewhere in the world, every time I open a new browser tab. Each day a mood is interrupted with a rush of Ooooh or Wowwww or Hmmmmm. This “Mid-Ocean” number is a favorite. When those foamy waves fill every pixel of my screen, I’m A-OK.
Mid Ocean, by Frederick Judd Waugh If I were to write an article on How to Start Running Again After a Break, it would be one sentence: Go Out and Do One Luscious Wild Intentional Mile for two weeks. It would also include:
Get yourself a pair of running shoes that shines as bright as the morning sun. Or a pair so delicious that you smack your lips just thinking about your next jaunt around the neighborhood.
I love being obsessed with a song. One song that I need to hear over and over, robbing it of all its power, beauty and meaning. It’s hard to stay in the pit of Am I wasting my life, when your mind’s a-buzz with: God I love this song and I’m going to listen to it again.
Here’s a song I recently listened to for about three days straight, by The White Stripes. I played it on Spotify, and couldn’t keep my hips and shoulders from shaking doubletime. And get this: When I found this video, and saw the clock on the wall of the hotel room—see the time? It was the same time in my world, 3:01.When I get really hung up on my self, I look at the photos from the Webb telescope and drop into the language of the cosmos. I wish we could hit a giant pause button, and blow a global dog whistle: Hey people, listen up! Somehow, a group of very very clever scientists came together and figured out a way to get a telescope into space, park it precisely where the gravitational pull of the sun and Earth balance out, and then stare into billions of years in the past in order to take photos of what’s out there and see if we’re alone, and we’re only six months into it! It’s almost too mind-blowing to metabolize, but for crying out loud. Imagine being a piece of all this stardust—living, flickering, dying—connected not only to All Things, but to All Time. That’s you, that’s me, that’s all of us.
That is all.
Beauty Hunter is a space where we examine the whole bag of life through the lens of beauty. This fall I’ll be resuming the Salons for Beauty Hunters, a virtual gathering of curious-minded people who want to talk about the larger issues of life from an exploratory POV. ←If you’re interested, more information at the link above, or email me at: tatyana @ everydaycreative (dot) net.