notice beauty

It is so foggy this morning that when I got off the bus at the school where I work, I couldn’t actually see the school. Fog covers all manner of sins and the ugliness around me this morning was transformed into a mysterious void-like land.

Every morning I dread the bus ride to school. It’s stuffy, I don’t usually get a seat and the bus driver is usually a lunatic. But there is certain point where the bus turns a corner and I get this amazing view of the bright bright orange sun rising up over the grey, sludgy expanse of wasteland that is next to the main road. It almost makes going to work worthwhile :)

...when the sun is low in the sky, everything, especially your skin, gets a beautiful golden glow to it. Like the world is being filmed through a filter of honey.

This morning one of the mums in my parent class brought some chrysanthemum tea in. It is amazing. You put a few brownish dried up looking things into a cup and when you add water they bloom into beautiful yellow flowers.

Sometimes this goal is so hard. Everything seems so ugly at the moment.

When I was walking to the bus this morning, there was snow on the ground again! But this time it was a totally different sort of snow. Instead of white fluffy stuff, it was hard little grains. It was as if some weather god had got out a big icing-sugar shaker and sprinkled it over the earth. I wish I’d been out earlier to see it before everyone had walked all over it.

It snowed last night and when I went to work this morning it was like fairytale land outside. Snow had settled on the branches of the trees and the leaves and it was awesome and amazing and it made me laugh. One of my colleagues at work gave me a snow ball as a present which she had collected from the roof of her car. I played with it for a while at my desk and then had to put it in the sink. I’m so annoyed with myself for not carrying my camera with me at all times because there was snow on the flowers at my school and it looked so pretty. I am officially a snow fan.

Ah, Korea! Over-packaging really is something Korea does with gusto and today at the supermarket I found a plastic container full of pomegranate seeds. It’s been ages since I have had a pomegranate and the brilliant red seeds just called out to me to buy them. I love them, they are like beautiful polished chunks of red glass, or a pile of rubies or something. I just wanted to look and look. But I ate them instead :)

Why is so much of the beauty I notice water related? This morning when I was waiting for the bus I was watching tiny drops of rain plipping into a puddle on the side of the road. The puddle was kind of muddy and dirty, but watching the rain make tiny little dimples that disappear as soon as they appear was quite fascinating.

Also, on my way to the bus stop I walked over a section of footpath that was carpeted in yellow, fan-shaped leaves. Very cool. I hope they’re still there when I get home from work so that I can take a photo… but I bet someone will have swept them up.

I love love love fogged up glass. I especially love fogged up bus windows, shower doors and mirrors. Foggy windows are even more beautiful if it is raining outside. I always write in the fog- whatever words come into my head.
One of the reasons that I bought “My Life as a Fake” by Peter Carey was because the cover picture was a scene through a foggy, rainy window. I am often guilty of judging books by their covers… I’m easily seduced by a beautiful cover design.