Exquisite
September 27, 2012 * * * * * Posted by: Barbara 
So you're seated at an outside patio on a pleasant late summer/early fall evening on a street lined with shade trees with leaves just starting to change color but still hanging onto their limbs and girls ride by on vintage bicycles while you're savoring each bite of the indiginous salmon and cream cheese appetizer in between sips of iced tea that is opaque in the dappled sunlight and you're so very comfortable and enjoying the conversation with both your grown sons who haven't been in the same state, even the same country for way too long and your husband is happy and relaxed and you're slightly, almost unconsciously aware of the light laughter and shared energy of people dining around you who seem to also be savoring an evening al fresco meal because they won't be possible too much longer, when in the middle of all the abundance, the sight of something so exquisite in its delicate beauty causes you to look again,
and you lose the conversation,
forget your meal,
and extract yourself unwittingly from the time before you and around you for a moment.
Just a moment.
That carefully placed, exquisite rose in a simple mason jar.
A pebble on a stack of paper.
A whisper of blue lobelia.
The moment, the sunlight, the air, the flower catching them all.
As if the evening wasn't so sumptuous enough already.
How, in moments like this,
can you possibly contain and fully understand how incomprehensibly rich this life is?
Reader Comments (23)
That's what I call " A Raindrops on Roses Moment" - when suddenly everything seems too beautiful to comprehend and you know it couldn't possible have all happened by accident.
Oh...I so know these moments. Especially the ones when you find yourself in the midst of unexpected family harmony and something catches your eye that so perfectly expresses that perfection. How can you possibly not step out and capture it???
Beautiful - all of it!
I also love cherishing the magic of these small moments - which are not small at all. Thank you so much for this beautiful evocation of the things that go into making a moment so precious.
Thank you. This is beautiful - so are Sheila and Marcie's comments. I found your post retweeted by Foxglove Lane whose work I admire. And I'd just put up my own awareness blog post a few days ago, for the Autumn Equinox. I love it when I find people living the same sorts of experiences in different parts of the world.
You have a lovely place here ladies :).
You had me at your first EXQUISITE sentence, Barbara....long before I glanced again at the lovely image that broke your thought! This is fabulous! All. Of. It.
Exquisite. A beautiful word choice for a beautiful image and moment.
YES!! This is magic!
Barbara, the image just took my breath away, and then I read your fabulous description of that moment and was transported to that place and time. I love your description of being in that moment and then being captured by something so beautiful.
Yes. Simply sharing a meal with your family all in the same place at the same time is reason to be cheerful. The setting is the icing on dessert.
Such a beautiful moment - and so marvellously captured by you both in this picture and your words.
the perfect description of loosing, and yet finding oneself in the moment
And BRAVO to you Barbara for capturing it! Beautiful!
life is lived in moments like this....just great. a beautiful moment...
What a beautiful rose and beautiful prose!
The simplicity and beauty makes my heart sing. Thank you for helping all of us stop for that moment and appreciate what you saw.
I love those perfect moments in time, I wish I was sitting there next to that rose.
Exquisitely poetic!
Reading all the way through the fisrt sentence I was already there with you, yet still you took me closer with your photograph, Thank you Barbara :-)
Reading all the way through the first sentence I was already there with you, yet you managed to take me closer with your photograph, Thank you Barbara :-)
Beautiful!
A simply lovely image and yes, those ah ha moments are just terrific.
I think that is exactly what those kind of moments are for, to remind us how incomprehensibly rich this life is... the hard part is paying attention enough to notice them.
This was so very lovely!