My Week in Beauty

Coastal Sunrises on My Morning Runs

The inter-mixing of light, sky, wind, water and earth. The same stretch of coast, yet so different one day to the next.

Tuesday: the sky a pastel palette of soft pinks and blues, the surf silky and smooth velvetizing the sand on contact. The feeling is of elements coming together, bleeding into each other.


Thursday: the sky shades of light grey hidden in places yet distinct behind clouds, the sea swelling and crashing -- seeming to come apart from itself even before knocking up against the beach. The feeling is stirring and emphasizes separation.

Music immersions

Ana Vidovic ( this one kept me up past my bedtime - guitar artistry from a guitar goddess)
The Pretenders ( Precious ) , ( Mystery Achievement )

Philosophical Discovery

Isiah Berlin - This is a philosopher I had not been previously been acquainted with. His ideas would need more than a brief summary, and I am far from well enough versed in his thought to do so. What I have been able to grasp so far -- his treatment of liberty, freedom, and the plurality of values, his dislike of any kind of fixed dogma-- all strike me as beautiful and connected to the thought of Zhuangzi. For example

Political action should be based on a ‘sense of reality’ founded on experience, empathetic understanding of others, sensitivity to the environment, and personal judgement about what is true or untrue, significant or trivial, alterable or unalterable, effective or useless, etc. Such judgement necessarily involves personal instinct and flair, ‘strokes of unanalysable genius’. In the realm of political action, laws are few and skill is all (1)

1- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy