Talking about beauty is as hard as making sense when you're out of breath. I was breathing in Bruges. Negotating the price of an old shoe polish box, putting together in my head the perfect gauffre combination, investigating hidden corners of Medieval churches. But not talking much. None of us did, apart from the usual amazement exclamations. So pretty that it was a bit too sweet, and that it didn't matter much that this fairytale city in Belgium was not free of touristic artifices and cliche souvenirs from cultures outside it.
But the narrow streets, coquette cafes, street music and street ducks...What beauty does to me can be called a bit cathartic. Wanting to start over, wanting to clean up. Be here and move on at the same time, which is harder to explain. All while feeding my idealistical views on, well, life in general. And lately while giving me ideas for exploring reality by writing dystopic stories.
I was in the past dishevelled in Paradise-resembling, lemons-in-trees Capri in Italy, by Aquinas' home in the same country, and in the Roman city with its conserved-in-lava bodies in Pompeii. Michelangelo's Pieta in The Vatican almost made me cry. Outside Dutch houses, under Bucharest's People House chadeliere, by a carousel in Dijon, France. In pink bohemian Berlin or while trying to pet Tatra moutains' white furry dogs in Poland. And pretty much everywhere in Prague (I could go on for a while). But then again, in all those places, the 'art of travel' stood in whom I was traveling with. I have to share beauty (and only seldom be alone. And take pictures).
A bit ironically, I came across a photo gallery of weird urban ecosystems this morning, all but beautiful, sometimes charmingly ugly. To balance the enthusiam:
http://io9.com/5514775/10-weirdest-urban-ecosystems-on-earth.
Nonetheless, I'm heading for the tulip fields. With 'significant others'.
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