B is for Beauty - the small perfections of ordinary life.

 When I was a child, my mother worked as a schoolmistress. She hated the work; it really isn't a suitable job for someone who dislikes children, and I don't remember her ever coming home in a good mood. She would usually arrive home and go straight out to spend an hour or so watering the garden with a hose, and come back in a more peaceful frame of mind. Usually. I do, though, remember her constant complaining, in particular about chalk dust. Back in those days, of course, every classroom was dominated by the huge blackboard at the front of the room. Chalk dust, if you were the teacher, apparently rained on you constantly, and settled into every crevice of your skin, particularly in your hair, at least according to my mother, who was not noted for her restraint of expression. Sometimes, if she was feeling benevolent, she would offer me five cents to brush her hair for her after dinner. I hated doing it; she only washed her hair once a week, like everyone back in those days before conditioner was invented, and it was always greasy and, to me, smelled bad, and in general I detested physical contact with humans anyway. But it was five cents, not to be sniffed at, and in any case it wasn't safe to decline the offer. 

Anyway, chalk dust, for my mother, was The Enemy - an ever-present scourge that could never be totally vanquished, but only held back by great effort. Looking back, I wonder what other teachers did, and why they didn't just use one of those ubiquitous chiffon scarves to tie over their hair.

I'd forgotten all about my mother's daily skirmishes with the dreaded dust, until I came across this photograph. This is chalk dust through an electron microscope. It's so beautiful that it took my breath away; it reminds me of those intricate, delicate ivory balls, with the layers of rotating spheres, that Chinese craftsman used to make. I hope they still do; it would be a tragedy if that ancient craft were lost.

Chalk dust

This reminded me of another set of microscopic photographs I had seen, and I went on the hunt. Thank you, Mr Google. These are human tears, but as you'll see, the different circumstances in which they're produced produce a very different image. The basal tears, ones that are generated more or less constantly to lubricate the eye, evoke for me a Chinese landscape, but those of laughter and grief, aside from their aesthetic qualities, tell a story that one can almost decipher intuitively; the tears of laughter resemble an aerial photograph of a thriving city, whereas the blasted scape of the tears of grief shows us the city in ruins.

Basal tears

Tears of laughter - a prosperous island nation

Tears of grief - a blasted ruin

And the list goes on. Here are some of the other images I found. 

This glorious blazing sun is a single grain of ragweed pollen.

This lacy confection is mucus in a pig's trachea. Basically, pig snot.

All these things are  useless at best, noxious at worst, and in any case humdrum, and yet when seen in fine, how beautiful they are. It's made me think about perspectives. The regalar roundof daiy life is full of these treasures, if only we could see them. And it's made me think about the small things in life, how often we overlook what could be a little injection of joy. We walk to work in the bustling city, but failing to look up, we do not see the flight of birds, winging across the sky in perfect formation. We travel to another city, grumbling all the way about the cramped seating, bad food and the rudeness of the stewaardesses, but fail to notice the breathtaking cloudscape just the other side of the window. We buy our milk from the grocery, but never notice the man who serves us. We don't see his constant small acts of kindness, or the way his face lights up when he smiles a greeting. 

The pressures of the quotidian can blind us to so much, if we let them. I've resolved to try to be more aware of these special moments of beauty. It could make the difference between a bad day and an okay one, or an ordinary day and one filled with glory.