Sometimes for my job I need to drive around in a big ol’ truck picking up steel, hardware, concrete accessories and the like. As you can imagine, I do most of this driving in grubby industrial areas. One day as I was going to pick something up, I turned around the corner and saw this massive mountain of broken glass at a glass recycling plant. It was about 30 feet high and about a quarter of a city block. It was one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen, it was a pale translucent blue-green, like an iceberg. The billions of edges of glass were reflecting the light, giving the surface a prismlike rainbow effect. The fact that it was surrounded by grungy factory type buildings made it seem surreal. I drove around the block a few times, people must’ve thought I was nuts.
Have you ever been going along on a humdrum day, then suddenly out of nowhere you see something amazing and beautiful?
(Please forgive the “Hallmark” syrupy-ness,I guess this time of year makes me all sentimental & gushy. Sniff)
I was walking along the side of a shallow, murky river in my old neighborhood one day about a year ago. The pathway runs alongside the river, then up a set of concrete stairs literally right next to an 8-lane freeway. It’s an area where a lot of homeless, prostitutes, and druggies hang out at night, so it’s not the safest place to be. You have to watch out for used hypodermic needles and condoms on the ground. Eewl.
Anyway, I took the route as a shortcut one afternoon, and I was watching the ground for any of the aforementioned objects, when I spotted an unusual leaf lying in the middle of the walkway. It had five pointed lobes, and was a beautiful gold color. I looked all around, but there were no leaves like it anywhere nearby, and as I walked through to the end of the path, I couldn’t find any more like it. It was so pretty I couldn’t help but keep it. I still have it, pressed and dried in a book.
So far as I can tell, it’s a variety of Japanese maple. But how it got there is beyond me. There aren’t any maples in that area; I’ve since gone back and checked. I kind of like that mysterious aspect of the story, though.
Tucked back in an alley in my old urban neighborhood is a waterfall. An old irrigation ditch goes through the neighborhood – it’s covered most of the way, but in a few areas it’s daylighted. Where a part of an alley crosses over a certain exposed part of the ditch near the neighborhood post office, halfway down the block, you’ll see the waterfall.
My neighborhood was originally founded as an upscale suburb of Denver, but when it was annexed by the city around the turn of the century, it was developed as a mostly working to middle class community. Some blocks will be lined with tiny cottages, but scattered amongst the modest homes will be huge Queen Anne style mansions, built several years before the blue collar folks arrived.
Walking to work in the middle of winter, it was clear, cold, and dark, and I looked up at the sky, and there was the moon and a couple of bright stars in a halo of high, pinkish-blue clouds. It looked like the clouds and moon had been painted on the side of a black dome just for me. In spite of the cold, I just stood there and stared at this awesome, beautiful sight. It’s kinda hard to explain, but it was one of those hushed, still moments that only happen in winter.
Mine’s not visual but aural. I was waiting for the subway downtown (Washington on the Blue Line) on a Sunday afternoon when an attractive and tall young black woman came down the stairs, stood against the wall to await the train … and promptly began to sing opera. Very VERY well; a slow and haunting song. No, I don’t recall which one. Her sweet voice carried through the station, and likely on to the other Dearborn stations. (For those who haven’t been to Chicago, the subways under Dearborn and State Streets downtown are a continuous platform for several blocks with multiple stops.) She sang for nearly ten minutes until the train arrived. Yes, that long; it WAS a Sunday, after all.
The only sourness was that a couple of baggy-pants, boxers-showing, cap-backwards assholes who wouldn’t know good music if it bit them on the nose came out of the Red Line transfer tunnel and, when they heard the woman singing, felt obligated to caterwaul in a rude parody of her excellent singing. She completely ignored them (she had headphones on) and several passengers gave these two yahoos the evil eye.
At the Buenaventura Mall in Ventura CA, there is a chinese fast-food place in the food court. Panda Express, China Express, something like that. What makes this one stand out is that the owner had at one time played violin professionally in an orchestra. When it was quiet, sometimes he would get his violin out and play heart-stoppingly beautiful music for us yahoos eating our fast-food on the run.
In the Berkeley hills along Panoramic way near the CAL football stadium is a tree lined walk behind a row of old brown shingle houses. For many years I had always pointed out several of the houses to my friends whenever we would walk past them. At the back of the homes were small doors and stairs at about half scale. I refered to them as the “Hobbit homes”. And indeed, that is exactly what they looked like.
Many years later while walking past with a girlfriend I chanced upon one of the home owners and enquired about the the small doors and stairs. It turns out that the different homes had all been designed by the same architect. He had purposely included these small scale features as parts of the children’s rooms so that they would have their own parts of the house in just their size.
To this day I am awed by the soul of a designer who could revert to childhood enough to add these features to his plans. Imagine the thrill that the children had of having their own doors and stairs just their size that the adults could not use.
Her sweet voice carried through the station, and likely on to the other Dearborn stations. (For those who haven’t been to Chicago, the subways under Dearborn and State Streets downtown are a continuous platform for several blocks with multiple stops.) She sang for nearly ten minutes until the train arrived. Yes, that long; it WAS a Sunday, after all. 
Was she singing into a telephone?