I was eating my first bowl of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup since I was a kid. The flavor was nostalgia in a bowl. Yet, all I could taste on my tongue was something sweet and special that I had lost long ago. I had once found beauty in single moments in my life. I cried deeper tears that felt like a endless well as I took that first savory and familiar sip. Like the last rung on a ladder, like that old Stephen King story about the brother and sister and lost youth, I felt stuck in the moment of life and death—fear and freedom.
I read many books and poems. I watch film and look at art. There are many beautiful things that I have read and seen that I can’t stomach. I believe that my work is steeped in a nostalgia flavored trauma that I just can’t handle. The flavor steeps into everything. Like I told an artist friend of mine, “I just can’t write only romance, it has to be sad or dipped in trauma.”
I see beauty written about this world but I am so exhausted from being alive all this time in a heavy fog of darkness and fear. I do not want sympathy. I do not want any crutches. I am strong and I know I will carry on. I still can’t talk about anything beautiful, still. I realized I never really did.
I’ve lifted myself from the depths and I never thought I’d ever get out. I still see its murky etching haunting me from time to time. Nightmares blend into days. And I am still refusing to reflect why I can’t write anything beautiful. I believe that I found beauty once. But, it was not what I had imagined. Maybe that was what the lesson was about. Beauty is full of hope that can only keep you going for so long. You need more tangible things to live on for sustaining yourself and your family. I’ve always found that I learned more from pain than happiness.
I’m definitely not going to start looking for beautiful now. I’ll let others dig deep to find the beautiful.
Maybe it’s in the canned chicken noodle soup, mass produced. I’ve always thought the canned soup was full of heart. No matter how bad you felt about something, your mom heating up that soup on the stove and putting it in a little bowl felt like love.
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Comments (7)
Very nice
This was so touching and wholesome! And I echo what Cathy said below!
Your writing is beautiful. It may not be all sunshine and roses, but we all need rain, and even the occasional hurricaine to remind us how small we are. Well done indeed.
Well-wrought! Beauty is in the experience of the knower. I see plenty of beauty in your work. This piece here, for example, reflects just such an experience. As far as whether the work we do will come across as beautiful to others, it is not for us to decide. As far as whether we can experience it in the work of others... I think it all depends on where we shine our light.
Amazing piece, Melissa! (It was never the soup. The heart was Mom's.)
Phenomenal work! The title grabbed my attention and I’m so glad it did. This was an amazing piece. I understand and relate to learning more from pain than joy. A part of growing up is losing that innocence that allowed us to see a lot of beautiful things; it makes us wonder if they were ever beautiful at all. But if they weren’t, and aren’t, that wouldn’t be a question that would have to be asked—that’s how I like to see it, at least. To be in that ignorant bliss again, tasting and savoring the magic and beauty of life! If only.
I love this. I love how you tied all your emotions into love at the end. Beautiful.