“
Under the pink wash of dawn, an unexpected foot of snow suffocates the landscape. The sight of so much transcendent white causes me to stare for minutes on end, mesmerized. More than mesmerized. In absolute awe.
I've experienced this one other time: freshman year of high school, a ten-day trip to Italy with my school....
It was the first and only time I've seen Michelangelo's -La Pietà-. It took a moment to realize what it was, but then it clicked. This was Mary holding the body of her son. I had seen a thousand images of Jesus on the trip, but this sculpture grabbed my heart and squeezed so hard I stopped breathing. At that age, I cared little for art and had no connection with Jesus, but in that moment, I was so transfixed by this sculpture -- -how could it be so smooth?- --that I began to weep. Right there. Tears fell, and I thought I was having some kind of religious experience.
But it wasn't that. It was the combination of profound beauty and sadness at such an exquisite level that it left me no option other than to cry. I hadn't experienced anything like that again.
Until now.
This snowfall.
The beauty enveloping the sadness.
With the tears welling in my eyes, I think once again about death. The rainbow in the cornfield. It's all so gorgeous, and it's all so tragic. The extremes of human emotion and how ironic that thoughts of dying fill me with such life.
I'm still staring transfixed at the world outside when my father's voice resonates behind me.
'What a fuckhole of a mess out there.'
And the beauty is gone.
The sadness, however, remains.
[Rose Yates]
”
”