I have arrived in Montelimar and to be honest, I immediately did not like it. The sky is a grey drizzle, the air feels so thick I struggle to take it into my lungs, and the streets are a little tired and worn out. It seems I have projected my own image onto this place as soon as I have arrived. But as I took a little time to walk around and discover, my tension started to ease off. Everyone is friendly here, people actually smile at me as I walk past – I realise that I had gotten used to the moods of people on the south east coast too quickly.
The feeling here is one like home… more simple, and less showy. Now I really start to relax. This morning, I saw the light peaking in through the little window, soft and gentle. Like a mother would wake up her child on a slow day. It’s not fancy here and my mood changes with it. I enjoy a cup of instant coffee this morning while sitting in bed and watching the light share my difficulty in getting the day started. Trying to do things in the most supposedly authentic, pure, and clean way is tiring – sometimes we just want to be our own unique mess. Today is grey again, but this time it is beautiful.
I find it interesting when people make the difference between that which is beautiful on the inside and that which is beautiful on the outside. As if it is important in some way. There has been a part of me who knows all along that these things are one in the same. Beauty is beauty. But nowadays, we even look at a sunset and wonder whether it is good enough to share with others.
I am convinced that everyone is affected by image, even people who say they are not superficial. It is hard not to be these days. I find myself falling into the hole, time and again, of worrying about how something looks to others. I wish worrying about how I appear to people were an arm that I could just cut off, but it’s not. So, if I cannot get rid of it, then how can I see it from a different perspective?
Art truly is a skill in seeing. I sit down to write, I walk around to take photos. Nothing is one thing on the inside or one thing on the outside, it’s just all beauty. It should be considered medicine. In a world where we can learn how to do so many things, the sweetest of them all is learning how to see beauty everywhere.
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