Reasons To Be Beautiful

Starting, 2011

The sound of cars lumbering through dirty puddles was growing tiresome, so I found a recording of Jan and Dean's Surf City and set it to repeat. It definitely lifted the mood, with the exception of the insistent two girls for every boy... Really. Still, it was better than the puddles and the cold and the dull flat view. Yes, my former Chicago self would have laughed in the face of the individual describing this morning as cold, but I no longer have sturdy Midwestern blood. Like it or not, 46° is now cold. Just one of many increments of change that have taken place over the last decade or so. So I shimmied around the apartment to warm up a bit Well, with two swingin' honeys for every guy, And all you gotta do is just wink your eye... Okay, that is it. Enough Jan and Dean. A little 90s Courtney Love will level the playing field and match this dead weather that brings life. She was born here. It's difficult not to appreciate a girl who reads a Sylvia Plath poem for her Mickey Mouse Club audition. Oh yes, this is it. Let the music match the mood. So I sink into it and somehow it all circles backward and ends up in yesterday. The first day of this year and the day that I woke to something beautiful done for me for no reason at all by someone I barely know who had absolutely nothing to gain by doing so. For me. I thought I'd be smiling all day. But then I wondered, why me? How? Do I deserve this? It halted me, concrete drying around my lower limbs, or maybe it was more like sinking in quicksand. Could I live up to it, this vision of the person she perceived? So I carried the weight around with me all day, just to see how it felt. I loved it and it scared me and...it was heavy. Today I sit here watching small red potatoes grow eyes, knowing they must be used. I feel the warmth of belief and realize it has stolen space from the heat of the struggle.