the inner spark

I was reading somewhere, I forget exactly what I was reading, but I was reading it. Really.

Anyway, I was reading somewhere about aging and the author mentioned how beautiful all children and teenagers are, no matter how homely they might be, every last one of them has this amazing glow about them. Maybe it's just the youth. Maybe it's because they haven't had the years of experience that older people have.

I'm only 12 years out of my teens, and my face has changed immeasurably since then. It's truly amazing how much it has morphed. And, I look back at photos of myself from then, and I'm blown away at how beautiful I was.

Well, still am. It's just different now.

That, and reading Martha Beck's book, Expecting Adam. It's about her pregnancy with, and raising of her son with Down Syndrome. She wrote about dealing with appearances, especially that of a child who isn't "normal."

"I've had a hard enough time learning to handle difference without discomfort, to look beneath the surface. I do feel sad, though, for parents who might have had an opportunity to learn a new way of seeing, to look into the magical part of life, and let it pass them by... Maybe it's just Adam himself. In his strange, not-quite-human way, he is constantly reminding me that real magic doesn't come from achieving the perfect appearance, from being Cinderella at the ball with both glass slippers and a killer hairstyle. The real magic is in the pumpkin, in the mice, in the moonlight; not beyond ordinary life, but within it."

So I've spent all morning on the subways and streets of New York, looking for the inner beauty in everyone I've met.

And I can tell you exactly where my prejudices lay. I can see the beauty in the crazy homeless lady who gets in everybody's way on the street, I can see it in the traffic cops and the sidewalk vendors and the subway buskers. I can see it in the retarded and the blind and the little 20 year old girls who are incredibly concerned with their own appearances and their places in New York, while attempting to land a rich husband and some sweet real estate on Central Park.

It's much much harder for me to see that spark in the older insanely wealthy women that I meet on the streets. Well, let's say nearly impossible. I can see it in maybe every one out of a hundred that I meet. And, it depresses me. It makes me feel really uncomfortable. And I'm not sure how to combat it. Part of it is trying to make them smile when I see them on the streets. That only works some of the time, and mostly when I have George with me. I don't know. I'll have to meditate on this one.

However, on the whole, the people of New York City are gorgeous. There is some light and some joy there, from the girl who gives me shit at the bakery in Harlem, to the world's worst steel drum player, busking at the Times Square subway station. Or to the girls helping me out at Sephora, or the little gay boys prancing around at H&M.

It's ridiculous how much love there is here. And you don't even have to look very deep for it. I'm so incredibly wealthy.