Images of beauty
By Alison Colavecchia
9.15.01 (www.slowtwitch.com)

This is not the piece I intended to write. I was supposed to be finishing up the piece about our daughter's first triathlon. In time I'll return to it, but now my thoughts are elsewhere.

After reading Dan's article, "Changing world," I found myself thinking about beauty, and about reaching salvation and peace by processing the ugliness of the day through a focus on things of beauty––a return to that which is good.

On Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001, I came home from work early. I went for a run, not out of duty but out of pleasure. My plan was to write a piece about beauty, and I hoped the writing and the running would occur in synergy. I thought I would move through my run focusing on images of beauty and see what kind of images would come my way while out on the path.

First in my mind's eye were my children. I could see them softly sleeping. They are the last thing I see before I go to bed each night. They are so lovely and at peace while they sleep, their cheeks, brows and woes soothed by the warmth of their covers and dreams of the night. I kiss each of them. Doing so reminds me that they are gifts from God, these little angels of ours.

Abruptly these images are interrupted by pictures of human debris––of charred flesh discovered under mangled steel and broken concrete. I can't shake these pictures. They bring me back to my disbelief of several years ago on learning that folks living along the east coast of Canada continued for months to find luggage, plane and human debris from the Swissair flight that crashed near Peggy's Cove. We were there two years ago, and this is one of the most picturesque and quaint places in the world. It is hard to imagine it bathed in ugliness, bathed in debris. But I saw the pictures, heard the stories and witnessed the monument. I am still running. I think of New Yorkers finding debris for months to come, and I feel a little sick.

I will my mind back to beauty and find myself at our fishing camp. This is pristine and untouched beauty in the middle of the bush. It is northeast of Quebec City, where our love of the outdoors and family gatherings was nurtured. The mountains are round but rugged and the camp not accessible by car. The water is mirror-like every morning, and it is shared with the deer, moose and beavers that also inhabit this part of the world. As I run, I can hear the loons, see the bats swooping at the dock and recall the billions of stars I saw while lying on the deck, face up toward the night sky.

And then I hear the loud drone of military helicopters. We are again being invaded by massive helicopters practicing night moves in the dark with their lights off. The eerie sound reverberates through our camp, through our bodies. If we were to reach up from our spot on the deck they feel close enough to touch.

The terrain at the camp is said to be much like that of Bosnia, and so the local army base has been using the mountains to practice low-flying night maneuvers so they'll be able to drop off and pick up soldiers in the dark. I remember thinking how privileged we were to never have to encounter this in our daily lives. Today, I wonder about things like retaliation and war and wonder what this will mean for our children in the days, years and decades to come.

I am back on my path. I notice the warmth that is enveloping me, but I am now lost to ugliness. The images of beauty are just too difficult to maintain. I find myself thinking about all of the parents waiting for their children to come home, the children waiting for their parents to come home, the pets waiting for their owners to come home. I run harder.

I think about the ugliness that will disturb so many people’s slumber for years to come. I try not to imagine what the horror must have been for the individuals who chose to jump, who chose to leap rather than face what they saw behind them. My heart aches for these people, their families, their friends. I have not been able to dislodge the image of a man falling.

I am running away from thoughts of people alone and scared in the dark––away from images of people carrying posters of loved ones lost, of parents desperate to find their children. I am nearing the end of my run, and I am mad. I am mad that someone could so violently shake my beliefs about freedom and democracy because I have now not entirely escaped war in my lifetime. I am mad because I now know that my children’s lives will be changed from this day on––because my run of beauty has been stolen by ugliness.

Walking toward home, children are getting out of school and laughing their way home, oblivious to the events of the present. As I listen to their laughter, I am thankful to be pulled back to a moment of beauty. I think about the amazing capacity of the human mind to find a way to survive. Some will separate thoughts from emotions until it is safe to bring them together. Others will survive because their minds will find deep, dark recesses to temporarily store the overwhelming pictures, also not recalled until they can afford the luxury of processing, of grieving, of feeling. I try to derive some comfort from the thought that each victim, rescuer and helper will find his or her own way of coping with the terror and ugliness.

As I wait for our children to arrive home, safe and secure, I wish for survival, healing, and a return to beauty for those now in pain. I wish for the images that shake a soul to the core to fade, and for uninterrupted slumber. Most of all I wish for peace.

Still tri’n