'Little Beauties’

Every morning, a little stuffy in the dusky dawn, I make myself a cup of tea and then return to bed and look outside my bedroom window at the shabby little garden and rickety, grey fence that mark the back of this dear old house where I live in downtown Santa Barbara. There is a hum of freeway in the distance, crows swoop and caw, and slowly my mind begins to awaken to the day. I await with pleasure the rising of the sun that will illuminate the bushes and trees just on the other side of the fence, making the leaves sparkle green and gold, green and gold. I think of it as my very own little, glittering light show from God. And I am happy.

I have a lot of friends that assure me that if I smoked pot, it would be EVEN BETTER. But I have to admit, that I am completely and totally content with my apparently mediocre happiness.

Once I dated a guy with whom I went hiking up Rattlesnake canyon. At one point I sat on a rock and gazed out at the ocean: an enormous, blue-grey swath of color, with darker, rumpled islands softly crowning its glory away in the distance. I exclaimed, “Isn’t this beautiful?” And he said, “Wait until we get higher up on the trail. It’s even better.” He didn’t even stop to look at what I saw. I found this really strange and sad, because he was missing out on the little beauty, holding out for the BIG beauty up and around the corner. What if there was a rattlesnake hidden around that corner not expecting to be stepped upon? Then my date would’ve missed out on everything as he screamed and screeched in terrified pain!

No, I think I’ll hold out for the unenhanced, little beauties that give me joy along the way.

As John Lennon used to say, “Imagine there’s no heaven…”