A Beautiful Disagreement

When it snows,you have two choices: shovel or make snow angels.

To give credit where credit is due, my family is pretty artistic.

One of my grandmothers is a seamstress who also paints and makes porcelain dolls.
My other grandmother writes comedic stories and reads them dramatically.
My father grew up singing and is an aficionado of antiques.
My mother scrapbooks,taught me piano, and sang on the radio with my father.
My older sister plays three instruments and is a beautiful operatic soloist.
I play the violin, perform theatrically, make crafts, and am a bit of a culinary artist.

All of that is to say that my younger sister has the keenest of eyes for naturally beautiful opportunities that make for splendid photographs. The photograph shown is one that she has called "Find the Simple Things in Life." First of all, the title itself is intriguing, not suggesting that life is simple, but rather that simplicity can be found...and finding it is so much more enjoyable than if simplicity was just normal. I doubt she put that much thought into it, but it is great nonetheless.

Take a look at her picture. About a half of a second after looking at the photo, you will see the snowy smile that the wind has blown onto the old brick wall. But at first glance, all that this photo is made up of is

snow and bricks,
white and red,
soft and rigid.

Snow. White, wet, soft, silent, pure, fresh snow.
Bricks. Red, solid, imposing, unwavering, old bricks.

The snow falls fresh each time, and coats the earth with something new; snow unifies the world by making it seem that the whole world is made of one substance. Its whitness whispers of purity and serenity, the result of being made clean and new. Snow can be formed, shaped, played in, and caught on the tongue.

Maybe the bricks are a fortress, a boundary, a guard that we have put up to protect ourselves from the elements. Maybe their color symbolizes trouble, pain, and calamity...wearing the old bricks down little by little. The bricks exist for function, not fashion, and have existed so for years.

On the day the wind blew the pure snow onto the dirty wall, a beautiful disagreement was formed. The new befriended the old, the silent conversed with the imposing, the ever-changing changed the changeless.

And together, they smiled.