Writing inspired by stills…

I know one day, I’ll look at these photos and think: I should have got my haircut.  Like I wasn’t ready for all the beauty around me.

All ignore all these smiles and moments of absurd joy.

And wish it were more picture perfect.

As perfect as it felt.

There is something to carrying your beauty on your sleeve.  To reflect your personality in your style.

It’s why these monuments get built.

The thought that beauty in all its forms makes this life better for all of us.

Pictures show a particular type of beauty.

Still beauty.

But this journey, through a country I had never even heard of before I was asked to go there…

Was not a still beauty.

Was not a beauty that will exist as is for centuries.

That needs no context.

It is a living beauty.

A changing beauty.

A breathing beauty.

A “you just had to be there” beauty.

This beauty has a story behind.

Has a rippling effect.

Will change as history continues.

Little by little.

Until the only thing that is the same, is the stillness this photo lets us look at.

Beautiful.

Changing.

If I would have taken that extra hour or two to get my haircut, it might have cut into the time I took

To capture all this life.

Into stillness.

So excuse me. I’m too distracted by all this beauty to match it.