Down the Rabbit Hole

Beauty in the Mundane

Blogging Circle of Friends
DAY 1132: December 21, 2015
Prompt: “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” ― Plato Have you ever seen anything that you thought was beautiful which someone else thought was ugly or just plain? What was it about the object that made it beautiful to you?

I spent a fair amount of time traveling to and around Mexico during the time I was with my ex-husband. My first trip there was while we were dating in college. I had many moments In Mexico in which I found beauty in landscapes and in the elements that might otherwise be considered ugly. Looking back, I think I fell in love with Mexico almost as immediately as the lights of Mexico City rose like a rolling ocean of light on the horizon. Mexico city is a sprawling urban empire as as such, there is a fair amount of things about its crowded, throbbing streets that one could say are ugly. There is crime, brutality, poverty. I saw many street children and women with emaciated infants begging outside cathedrals that could have been covered in gold. It was almost obscene that in the shadow of all that opulence, you could find some of the most devastated souls. There was beauty there too, in the open faces of the young street vendors and in the market stalls filled with bursting, bright chile peppers of every shape, size and color. Outside the city, there was an amazing peace and serenity in the cacti dotting the rolls hills and flat plains on the drive out to Veracruz. There was beauty in that wide open isolation and it took my breath away. In the smaller, colonial villages the crumbling facades of buildings were storybook lovely. High above Cuernavaca from the flat roof of my in-laws, the mismatched rooftops with their flapping clotheslines and the winding alleys and gated yards were randomly beautiful in a haphazard way. Beauty is where you look but also how you look.