Beauty is a choice

April can be a tough time in Edmonton. Here it is April 4th and there is still snow on the ground. I walked my kids to school this morning and reluctantly put on a toque, winter boots and mitts. When I got in my car I weaved around pot holes and construction on every street. It can be tough to find the beauty here - especially this time of year. The dreariness of “spring” has really been getting to me. I have found myself continuing to ask, “why do I choose to live here?" However, instead of continuing to hear myself complain I instead decided to stop complaining and instead seek out beauty in Edmonton. After all, one of mine and Maddenda’s core values is beauty. I want to live a life where I show appreciation for beauty and contribute to a more beautiful world. In this post, I walk you through an ordinary day that turned into one filled with beauty.

The beauty of togetherness

My day started with a workout and then a stop at Starbucks. The Starbucks I normally go to in the Brewery District has a row of seating looking outside with maybe five or six seats for people to sit. Most of the orders are pick up orders where people order ahead, quickly run into Starbucks, grab their coffee and leave. Today I stopped at the Starbucks on 107 street downtown. Initially, I was a bit miffed because I couldn’t find parking and when I went to order my drink on the app it didn’t offer ‘order ahead’ as an option. So instead I reluctantly decided to park and walk inside to order. When I stepped inside I was taken aback by the people inside. It was what we all remember Starbucks used to be - a community gathering place for people to catch up with one another. It was beautiful seeing friends, couples and colleagues gathering with one another to start their day.

The beauty in the fragility of life

After grabbing my coffee I went to my husband’s office. He wanted my eye to see where he should hang pictures and keepsakes he had collected over the years. He had enlisted the help of one of our neighbours who is the local handyman in the area. Over the past four years I have developed a friendship with this neighbour who helps me with all my decorating and handiwork around the house. Over time I have also gotten to know the various helpers our neighbour brings over to help with my odd jobs. Today he brought one of his helpers who I’ve gotten to know over the past three years. We’ll call him Dean. When I met Dean he was probably 230lbs, strong, capable and willing to do any job. He has four kids and a wife and was always looking to make some extra money for his family. When I saw Dean today he was maybe 130lbs. He has been fighting pancreatic cancer for the past two years. He was telling me today that he and his wife recently made the decision to stop his chemo treatment. He has come to accept that he is terminal and that the “quality of his days are more important than the quantity.” We talked about the importance of living in the now because at the end of the day that is all any of us really have. I was reminded of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now where he says, "Your life is now. Realise that the present moment is all you have. Make NOW the focus of your life." That moment was a very touching, human moment between the three of us and sadly perhaps our last.

The beauty of lasting friendship

I then went to meet my friend of 40 years (yes, we have been friends since we were 3 and 4 years old). That in itself is beautiful. We have spent the last 40 years going through it (all of it!) knowing that we have one another’s unwavering support. We’ve all heard the saying that friends come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime and whether she likes it or not, she is in mine for a lifetime. We spent nearly two hours together catching up on life - the good, the bad, the funny, the mundane - all of it. 

Hacking our way through 40 years of friendship

The beauty of undiscovered art

I had the rest of the afternoon for my “artist’s date.” Recently, I started a book by Julia Cameron, called the “Artist’s Way.” In that book she prescribes for people weekly artist’s dates. This is where you go out with the sheer purpose of doing something creative. This week I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for my artist’s date. But for me, when in doubt, go antiquing. I made my way over to an antique store in downtown Edmonton called Vinnie’s Treasure Shoppe. Unfortunately,  it wasn’t open so I instead decided to walk around the area and continue to look for and capture beauty I came across. 

I walked past Harcourt House. Harcourt House is “a public visual arts institution and art education centre that develops, presents, and interprets art and design. It enables transformative experiences by connecting art and design with local and global communities, and by providing affordable studio facilities to local artists.” I’ve driven by here before and have been curious what it is, but have never gone in. Prior to going in a noticed boards with posters advertising various events, exhibitions and fundraisers for the Edmonton art community. When I wandered inside and up to the 3rd floor gallery, I walked into an exhibition by a local artist, Dustin Coulson (@duco__). The exhibition was called Unnatural Order. The exhibition is a series of sculptural works that utilizes birch bark as its primary medium. The description of this exhibition says, “a central theme of it is the concept of duality. The artist explores the tension between order and chaos, light and darkness and the human and the natural. Through their work, they invite viewers to consider the complex interplay of these opposing forces and to question the role that humans play in shaping the world around them.” Beautiful.

From there I wandered to Grant Notlely Park in Edmonton’s river valley. Immediately, I was presented with a pyramid shaped sculpture. On each side of the pyramid was a family holding hands with the scene of Edmonton in the background. The middle person in the chain of family members holding hands was greyed out to symbolize they were missing. Underneath the sculpture is a plaque that describes the piece of art called “Broken Families:”

“A broken family is still a family, only with broken dreams, and broken hearts. Here stands a memorial for those who died at work and those who are left behind. Look to the future, remember the past, and let not their deaths be in vain”

- Michale Brown

The beauty of connection

I wandered past this statue toward the benches overlooking the river valley. I went and sat down on one of the benches and looked out over our wondrous river valley. To my left sat a middle-aged man in a toque and jacket with headphones on. He too was looking out over the river valley and enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun. When I looked to my right there were four unhoused people sitting and looking out over the river valley. They were also enjoying the sun on their faces. We all sat there, each on our own bench, looking out at the beautiful landscape in front of us. All of us brought there to enjoy Edmonton’s beauty and all of us sitting there connected by that beauty. 

Then, to add to the beauty of that moment, the man to my left began humming a hymn. It was hauntingly beautiful to sit there and listen to him while looking at that picture perfect scene. Then, as quickly as it started, that man stopped his hymn and disappeared. The silence that followed the hymn was quickly followed, in a perfectly unscripted moment, by the honk of one of the unhoused people trying to launch a snot rocket from his nose. The duality of the moment - order and chaos, light and darkness, human and the natural, love and fear, hymn and honk - was divine and oh so beautifully Edmonton.

Edmonton’s beauty can’t always be seen, but there’s an energy that can always be felt. That energy is where the beauty is. Beauty is….

….. buzzing conversation in a coffee shop.

….. knowing a recent encounter with someone might be your last.

….. a two hour lunch with a long time friend.

….. an undiscovered art community.

….. undiscovered art.

….. memorials to remember those that came before us.

….. shared connections by people of all walks of life.

….. the sheer awe of nature.

When I went to leave the park I passed by one of the open benches overlooking the river valley. The plaque on the bench read, “Gordon & Maxine Cole - Our love for Edmonton, the river valley and each other.” Gordon and Maxine chose to love Edmonton, the river valley and each other. Today I chose to feel beauty, and from that choice, felt a love for Edmonton, the river valley and one another.