This week’s story is a slight diversion from the new norm, because the image isn’t by a friend of mine. I found it on the internet, to illustrate a real event. This story is for you, Caitlin. All the love.
Sometimes, I think things can only be beautiful when they’re unexpected. Or maybe that’s not right. Maybe it’s just that beauty is magnified when it slips up on you unawares. Beauty surrounds us every day, and we never see it; but then, something makes you look again. Something highlights, changes, draws your eye, and it becomes the focus of a world made new, made beautiful around you.
It was a cold night, as I think it has to be. The dead of winter, and we were tired, lethargic, active but not engaged in a mundane activity. I was standing on the roof of a building, with the lights of Vancouver stretched out below me, paying no attention to their twinkling, or the music of the cars below us. Not seeing the way wisps of clouds scudded across a sky that was still reflecting borrowed light long after its own had gone. I paid no attention to the stars, whispering for my attention in their velvet prison. It was just a backdrop, a weekly familiarity.
And then it happened.
There was a flash, or a sparking, a lighting. The sky was suddenly alive in a way I had never seen. There was a green line snaking across the upper horizon, and wisps of colour came off it like a sparkler. Beautiful. Enchanting. We all screamed and everyone streamed outside, wearing socks or bare feet on the cold concrete, hugging our naked arms and each other for warmth, mouths open in silent awe.
Dumbstruck.
The lights were gentle but bright, a strange and hard to explain contrast, and they were… otherworldly. Unlike anything I had seen. Nothing like the stars, nothing like a sunrise or a sunset, they are a light that seems painted onto the canvas of the night. They are apart from the world around them, and yet suddenly my eye was drawn to the beauty that they were a part of. The stars above us, the mirrored human lights below. The dark swathes of forest in the distance and the concrete buildings surrounding us that made dark patches against the warm yellow light. The warmth and presence of my friends around me became a part of the experience, and I felt… blessed. Like I was the first person in the world to see them. The only person to have watched them dance.
That was the night I saw the Northern Lights, and when I think of beauty, I will always think of it.
And when I think of beauty, I’ll always think of you!