Beauty is Imperfection

I’m hurting for Paris right now. Though lots of people are, I think New Yorkers who lived through 9/11 (and maybe those in Madrid and Mumbai) are feeling it perhaps a bit more acutely. There’s something about living in a big city. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t just make you some jaded creep. You live every day as a certain trust exercise with people in very close proximity. You constantly meet people with different accents and languages and backgrounds and amazing life histories if you bother to ask them questions. To negotiate this kind of maze requires humility and respect and reserve. You are all sitting on top of each other in sometimes cramped conditions and you have to make it work, and that requires in many ways boundless optimism. Your body comes to know patience and forbearance and you marvel that something so big and complex can work at all. To be that close to people and to have members of a sick cult betray that trust, violently, is something that made me physically ill after Sept. 11. And I felt it a little bit again tonight after seeing the images from Paris, a beautiful city I once visited and hope to again.Eiffel Tower

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