A Tiny Bit Huge

I bought pink tulips and put them in a white vase. I put the vase on the kitchen island.

And there it sits, surrounded by a half eaten bag of almonds, a crumpled ball of red foil wrappers, several used coffee mugs, a box of bandaids, a stack of books, a stack of dishes, a paint brush, a rawhide, scissors, sticks, salt, pepper, vitamin B12, advil, a half painted canvas, and a wooden bowl full of onions and candy canes.

It seems fitting – me trying to shove a bit of beauty into a chaotic and neglected world. It feels like where I am right now. Where my soul is. All fragile and pink and half finished and lost in a sea of debris.

My heart sinks with the weight of this ugly contrast. With the utter absurdity of pink tulips in a dirty kitchen. One or the other has to go, but I haven’t the energy for either. And since both are staying, I might as well stop painting the dividing line.

I look again and try to see the whole island as beautiful. To see it as a small city, where humanity lives in all its permeations; where diversity surrounds central park, and sidewalks are littered with surprise. Maybe the whole island is a work of art.

This idea seems a tiny bit huge to me. Because beauty lives in a white vase, or not. But art lives in the center always, from within one’s own place of perspective and intention and from the fragile pink of the soul. Wherever we place it, it belongs. Whatever we name it, it exists because we make it so.