Strange Beauty, by Jane Montero

Chapter 1

And every now and then there are these places that simply take your breath away.  You look down at the soil and you want to become it.  You stare at the floor, the walls, the lighting, the windows and you try to burn it into your soul.  There are the scents that take you back there, too - the flowers, the air, the food.  The sound of wind, waves, birds, rain.  Sometimes when you hear a stranger speak, they sound just like someone you knew; and, their voice makes you cry - for no other reason than the distant familiarity of it.  All of this is such strange beauty.

If I could write, I’d write about beautiful things.  You know, the morning after a snowstorm when the sky is crystal clear and the new fallen snow sparkles in the sunlight.  Or the way the sun falls silently into the horizon of the Pacific Ocean.  The smell of pine needles deep within the forest, or eucalyptus leaves near the beach. Clean sheets.  The smell of bacon. Falling in love.  

But the truth is, we’ve all seen strange beauty.  Watch as fabric cascades into waterfalls and sequins reflect the stage lights when a dancer leaps into the air.  The stillness of each moment captured on film.  And when the curtain closes, and the glitter from costumes is all that is left behind, the fog lifts from the stage;  you’ve seen strange beauty.

And then there are the days when the outside air seems to hug our untold secrets.  Before the sun fully rises and the stars are still alive, we watch our breath dissolve into space as we walk from this early morning chill into the day.  It is 30 degrees outside and I’m freezing.

This is what I love.  The quiet beauty.  The kind that doesn’t scream, “look at how beautiful I am.”  Not what one sees in beauty pageants or homecoming queens; for that is expected beauty.  No, what I’m talking about is the beauty in what we don’t expect; that which is simple, but striking; the kind of beauty that is undeniably strange and not noticed by everyone all at once.