Beauty Heals in Troubled Times – Signs of the Beautiful

For many years I engaged joyfully in decorating the outside of our New York City coop. Although the world seems to have gotten dark and darker, I continue to decorate because I believe beauty heals most everything. Recently, though, in my decorating ventures, I suffered one of the darkest times of all.

Our building is located near a busy intersection with major bus routes. It suffers through the onslaughts of public space with accumulated litter, theft, occasional graffiti and omnipresent gum wads polka-dotting the sidewalks.

To honor and protect private space near a public arena, one has to claim it. The best way to do this is to mark the area with beauty.

With this in mind, I designed gardens on both sides of the building with enhanced Curb Your Dog signs using poetry and inspirational sayings. After the author’s name, I added my own thoughts. (See my posts: Curb Your Dog-Signs of the Beautiful, and How to Make Signs of the Beautiful).

 

 

“The best friend of earth, of man is the tree.” -Frank Lloyd Wright

Please curb man’s other best friend

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We were not able to stop all acts of vandalism, but they were greatly diminished. On the other hand, people started taking pictures of the signs, sending them to their friends and in some cases posting them on websites. People from all over the world would come into the lobby and tell the doormen what the signs meant to them.

At some point, I would see people lined up to take pictures of each sign and I knew that we had touched something in the human heart.

It was a joyful time to interact with all these visitors. Then COVID hit with its time of darkness for so many people.

March 2020 – Signs of Determination

New York City was one of the first in the United States to get hit hard. We saw the hospital tents being raised a block away in Central Park and heard the promise of the hospital ship approaching the Manhattan waters.

My husband and I have a small farmhouse in the Berkshires of Massachusetts and at the urging of our grandchildren, we left the city. Before doing so, though, I said that I had to plant the spring gardens and make new signs, ones that reflected emotions around the pandemic.

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Another sign featured my favorite saying:

“The heart’s the only house of safety, my friends: It has fountains, and rose gardens within rose gardens. Turn to the heart and go forward, travelers of the night.” – Rumi

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“We must have the courage to live with paradox…of not knowing the answers…to listen to our inner wisdom and the wisdom of the planet which begs for change.” -Maureen Murdock

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“My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.” – Mitch Hedberg

Our gardens are real. Treat them with care.

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December 2020 – Signs of Dark and Light

I continued to design the gardens remotely and made new signs. In the early fall of 2020, our building was scheduled for a two-year facade repair. It was surrounded by an ugly scaffolding with its accompanying ropes and nets. Flickering fluorescent lights lit the sidewalks at night, and during the day the area was awash with the grayish-brown sludge from sandblasting. Little light entered the apartments, and there was no light for gardens to grow. Eventually the snows fell and in typical New York fashion, the white snows immediately turned gray.

We were still living in the country (with its frigid temperatures) in a not-so-insulated farmhouse. We did not see friends because it was too cold to visit outdoors at a time when vaccines were not available. During those very dark times, friends and family buoyed each other’s spirits by phone or zoom calls.

Because the dismal scaffolding enveloping our building killed all our flowers and removed the light from our windows, along with the virus promising to take the light of joy out of our souls, I decided the new signs should embrace the dark.

Turning to Friends

A friend in San Francisco offered to join me in my quest. We both knew that beauty heals. Though three thousand miles apart, we talked and often emailed each other sayings on light and darkness. What do friends do when they cannot hug or face each other or when it is so cold, lonely and hopeless? Poetry is one solution.

Over the next two months, we vetted hundreds of sayings on light and dark and discussed each one of them. We had already joined Andrew Harvey’s website, giving us one Rumi quote a day. As always, I searched for the main inspirational quote, the Buddha or Rumi saying, the one with an ecological idea, the humorous saying (yes, also in times of dark) and the special one at the bus stop.

I don’t even remember which of us found each saying. I do know I discovered a Mary Oliver one because when I told my friend that I did not know who she was, he immediately sent me, Devotions, her book. So, knowing that aesthetics can heal, in the deep of a dark winter, we selected nine signs to take away despair by remembering the light. Still, we also embraced the beauty of the dark.

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“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” -Mary Oliver

Scaffolding Blues! Don’t make it worse… Curb your dog.

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“In a time of destruction, create something.” -Maxine Hong Kingston

Just not another scaffolding!

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“Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.” -Joan Chittiste

Scaffolding Blues. Don’t Make it Darker. Respect our gardens.

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“I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, so that there is only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as light.” – Barbara Brown Taylor

So how now, dark snarky scaffolding, what is your lesson?

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We chose poetry of light and darkness and watched as beauty healed…

… I mailed them to my building to be placed in the gardens….

… my neighbor decorated them with dried flowers to negate the blackened snow…

… I had great joy…

… the lines of people still formed…

…someone whispered that  beauty heals…

… the pictures were taken and posted on websites…

… everyone was lifted as they realized the beauty of darkness…

… I had even more joy…

… then…

…and then I found out  that my friend in San Francisco had died.

It was not COVID, but a mysterious lung disease that mimicked the virus and eventually took his breath away.

So I have to do DARK all over again….this time without him.

God, I miss him. He was so, so much fun to do “dark.” I was always impressed with his ability to live without judgment or fear. As a highly enlightened being, he had the right spiritual advice for any of life’s troubles and if that didn’t work, he always had his bag of jokes.

In my prayers, I talk to him, asking for his insight on one more problem or the catharsis of one more joke or the genius of one more insightful piece of poetry. In my dreams I want to believe I hear the answers. One thing I know is that he would never want me to stay in the dark too long.

Sometimes, through the murmur of my babbling thoughts, beyond the rustle of my art papers, or in the whisper behind a breeze I can almost hear him saying to me,

“Light?…..Dark?…..  Aren’t they the same?”

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In loving memory of Lawrence “Goombah” Kelleher

1943-2021

 

Amanda Gorman

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