Aging beauty

Those swans are in the window of a closed business in a dying town in West Texas. The window has a reflection of me, taking the photo, and of the buildings across the street. I think they were probably beautiful when the window was first installed, and the store was fresh and filled with people and with the future.

I think the swans are even prettier now that they're the liveliest and most graceful things there. It might have been easy to miss seeing them in 1930, or whenever they first saw that street, because the new window below it would have been full of beautiful displays and the reflections of locals in their hats and suits and dresses.

The same camera has just taken photos in Portugal, and England, of odd little old things, of new and smiling people and of temporary tricks of light, ancient arches and statues and castles.

Look with your eyes and your heart at the beauty around you.


Today, the links are all from Just Add Light and Stir

Beauty
See beauty in...
Beauty in onions
An Abundance of Beauty (with readers' links, and you can add your own!)
photo by Sandra Dodd

Abundant beauty

Listen, feel, look. Something will be beautiful, even just for a moment, if you are present and open. How much beauty would make a beautiful moment? What could be set aside so that beauty could fill its place? Turn your face toward beauty. Turn your heart toward beauty.

SandraDodd.com/angles
photo by Sandra Dodd

Adding beauty

Adding beauty where it was not required is the heart of artistry. Perhaps art is never "required." Maybe art is always a choice.

Discovering or creating beauty
(Twenty posts before this dealt with beauty.)
photo by Lydia Koltai

Impermanent beauty

The peaceful beauty of a sleeping child, a young woman, beautiful food, a flower, a building—nothing lasts forever. Beauty might only last a moment, a day, a year, and will change. See what is lovely. Love what is loveable, and remember to expect it to slip away.

photo by Karen James, of found art
and another, found by Lisa Jonick

Now that I think of it, though, most photos are of found and fleeting art.
I'm grateful to all those who have let me share their photos here.

Seeing beauty

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," they say. Sometimes it's intended to be a put-down, of the thing, or of the person who said "Beautiful."

"You're looking at the world through rose-colored glasses" is another sort of light insult.

Picture anything, though—a cloud, a teacup, a puppy—and think about people who would criticize or dismiss, comparing them to someone who would quietly admire and appreciate the thing.

I like to think of parents being the way they want their children to be. I try to remember to be the way I want to be remembered. Maybe seeing beauty is one of the most beautifying things in the world.

SandraDodd.com/wonder.html
photo by Ester Siroky

Clutter or beauty?

Clutter and beauty can coexist. Seeing what's interesting can remind you that clutter can be cleaned up later, but beauty should be seen whenever possible. When children are older, clutter can subside. Find the good parts today.

SandraDodd.com/chores/joy
photo by Sandra Dodd

See beauty in...

It's easy to see beauty in nature. It's good to learn to see beauty in tables, cloth, air, spoons, socks, switches, handles, doorknobs, words, sounds, air, clouds, breeze, and ideas.

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Sandra Dodd

The learning and the beauty

"It's all about that mind shift isn't it? It applies to so much in how unschooling works or doesn't work. If you can't see the learning and the beauty, you will have a hard time unschooling. It seems to work best in all those small ways that add up to the bigger picture." —Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Chrissy Florence

Beauty and softness

Jenny Cyphers wrote:

It's such a big part of our culture to get it done now, fix it all now, make it happen now, do, do, do, do. Sometimes what life really requires is calm and patience. A very valuable thing to learn in life is to how to take care of ourselves and others during times of stress and times that aren't ideal and wonderful.

I think that's part of "stopping and smelling the roses." If you don't take that time, you miss some pretty wonderful bits of life. When there is stress and other negative influences happening around us, it's even MORE important to take that time to seek out the beauty and the softness and the sweet and light and happy things.

—Jenny Cyphers

SandraDodd.com/moment
photo by Sandra Dodd

Simple beauty

If you can see the beauty in plain and simple things, the world will be more beautiful.

SandraDodd.com/gratitude
photo by Sandra Dodd

Bases and basics

"Base" means foundational—the heavy, bottom part of a structure. The basis of an idea is its underlying solidity. These ideas are literally basic.


Base your life in basic things. "Cover your bases." Don't let fantasy or "what if" pull you off base.

Accept and admire beauty if you can, instead of dismissing things as "just..." Just a stump. Just a dandelion. Can you see the beauty in the stump? It might be a safe place to stand after a rain. To a child you love, it might be a chair or a mountain. Dandelions are flowers that make puff-toys for children to blow on. They grow without our help. They might be the only colorful flower you'll see, some days. If a child loves them, can you follow?

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Sandra Dodd, of unimportant things, in Tiguex Park

Beauty in the moment

Parvine Shahid wrote:

Eyo and I were looking through photos and we came across a couple he had taken during our last flight from London. I was reminded of that moment we were sitting on the plane, looking out of the window. He decided to take some pictures and said, "We are out of Earth—it looks like we could walk on the clouds!" The world can look very different in each moment and that reminded me of the importance of slowing down to be able to see the beauty in each one.  —Parvine Shahid

SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Eyo Shahid (click it, to enlarge)

The beauty around you

"Look at what you have, not what you do not have. If all you focus is in negative things that is all you will see. If you always look for the positive slowly you will, more and more, see the positive and the beauty around you and that will become who you are." —Alex Polikowsky

SandraDodd.com/alex/optimism
photo by Sandra Dodd

Beauty

Look for beauty in little things—patterns, or colors.

SandraDodd.com/dishes
photo by Sandra Dodd

Beauty in onions

The other day I saw some beautiful onions. People would buy them even if they hadn't been arranged so nicely, but the produce manager had set each onion down by hand, with thought, and there they were in a pattern I helped to dismantle by taking some of them home with me.

Some of what we have used to be elsewhere. Some of what is at our house will be other places someday. Patterns come and go like cloud pictures, and we ourselves are part of that changing swirl of life and beauty.

An Abundance of Beauty

Helping children discover and appreciate art can be difficult when the parents' idea of art has to do with galleries and oil paintings from other centuries. School creates a limited view of art, and culture reinforces that.

There is no topic or subject or pursuit that doesn't connect to or consist of art. Here's a linguistic example: "Artificial" once meant magnificently lifelike or cunningly wrought. It wasn't an insult until fairly recently (in linguistic time, which is slower than human time, but not as slow as geological time). I find beauty in the forms and histories of words.

For flat art, you can look at paintings, photographs and graphics at art.com (and buy prints or posters if you want). For things for children to play with (children, teens or adults), there are many links here: SandraDodd.com/art (interactive online, or physical fun at home).

I hope readers will contribute to a list of places to look for art, or things to see as art. I will name five and give links. Please leave a blog comment, if you wish, and name as many or as few as you like, with or without links. If you want to create a clickable link, directions are here: http://sandradodd.com/hotlink. I wrote them myself, so don't be afraid. It's pretty easy.

My five:

the dashboards of cars
water
snacks
holiday adornment
game boards

(the image above is an art card made and given to me by Erika Davis-Pitre)

Ideas might start to grow

There's a fun fallacy in people who sort of hear about unschooling and then condemn it. They often seem to have taken the position that they know all about school, and we aren't sure what or where it is. 😊

I don't know why I've survived all these years, still helping people. It's really tiring, because school defenders think we're clueless about school, and structured homeschoolers seem to assume that we have no idea what "a curriculum" might be. The same arguments and defenses and attacks, over and over.

But then some of them stick around to see what they're mad about, and discover that there's actually something to it, and even if they think it's crazy and irresponsible, the seeds have fallen, and someday when they're frustrated, and their child is sad, the ideas start to grow in them.

I guess that's why I stick around, too.


The learning and the beauty
photo by Niki Lambrianidou

Old and new

It's good to see old things in new ways. There is creativity in doing something unexpected with materials already on hand. Learning can come from novel combinations.

Aging beauty
photo by Holly Dodd (long ago; I'm using it anew)

Artsy collections

This photo is of home decorating, artistry, collecting and storytelling. Everything in the picture has a story. Some might be "found it," or "made it," but those stories would involve where, and how, and when. Not everyone can arrange a collection interestingly or harmoniously. One of the greatest forms of artistry is arranging a display of paintings in a museum, or organizing a gift shop so that the visit itself seems a gift. But wait! Look at the duck shadow! Beauty pops up wherever you see it.

SandraDodd.com/bookmotif is an example of an online collection.
photo by Colleen Prieto

Lights!

There is something special about light, when it's dark. Small illumination is a great dark space can be beautiful. A camp fire, or a candle flame. A torch or flashlight. Neon, or the lit-up name of a store. A traffic light in a rural place. The familiar porch light of a favorite house. Fireworks.

Appreciate casual light shows. Maybe create a bit of light, for its special beauty.

SandraDodd.com/light
photo by Amy Milstein