Day One of Beauty Breathes: The Beauty Sit

Day One of Beauty Breathes: The Beauty Sit

Today we sat on the porch of Fremont Coffee and wrote down what we saw as beautiful. A young girl's purple coat with a pink scarf and aqua trim. A brilliant robins-egg blue door against dirty cream aluminum siding. A curly-haired man with gorgeous cheekbones, who walked by us, then drove off across the street in a sleek cherry-red convertible. The backs of a row of newspaper boxes, chained together, dented and lightly graffited: blue red yellow green white black. A smiling girl with a blue felt whale stitched on her messenger bag. My friend Dana's epic boots, and my epic friend Dana herself. Green foliage against red-brown brick, hanging across the doorway of a pub like bangs. The feel of the fall cold deepening and blowing across my cheek. The smell of burnt chocolate and coffee. A fuchsia coat. A single wilting pink flower in a huge gray stone planter. A dun-colored building with a small window on the left, a large window on the right, and no windows in between. Moss spilling down a tree trunk. A nest of wet and blackened tree roots. Friends in walking in pairs.

Sitting there, I found that I constantly wanted to shift perspectives, to move to Dana's seat or even across the street, where I thought maybe there were something new I would see; something I was missing. It was hard to just sit still, exactly where I was, and just keep noticing what was in front of me, without trying to immediately to shift into a new view, the next thing.

--Kristen McHenry