All This Beauty

by The Weepies

All this beauty--
You might have to close your eyes
And slowly open wide.

All this beauty--
We travelled all night
We drank the ocean dry
And watched the sun rise.

You can ask about it
But nobody knows the way--
No breadcrumb trail to follow through your days.
It takes an axe--sometimes, a feather
In the sunshine and bad weather
It's a matter
Of getting deeper in
Any way you can.

All this beauty--
You might have to close your eyes
And slowly open wide
And watch the sun rise.

I can see you're new awake
Let me assure you, friend,
Every day is ice cream and
Chocolate cake
And what you make of it, let me say,
You get what you take from it, so be amazed
And every stop,
Every stop,
Every stop,
You've got to be brave.

'Cause all this beauty--
You might have to close your eyes
And slowly open wide--
Watch the sun rise.

Things that are beautiful:

* Cherry blossoming trees

* street lined with fluffy snowball trees

* My 9th-grade dyslexic ESL tutee rocking out at "Frog and Toad" (and being very upset that Frog laughed at Toad in his bathing suit, something that has always miffed me, too!)

* Kissing my fiancee--still makes me weak after almost 8 years

* My adorable 5th graders, about to put on their Civil War plays, and how they laugh every time they play "Honey, I love you"

*The amazing shower my sister threw me this weekend, with a Jeopardy game about me, and the booklet Betty put together with questions about me like, "If you were a contestant on Project Runway and had to make Cake a wedding dress from items in her home, what would you use?" Best answers: Blokus pieces, Le Pens, recycled bottles of moisturizing body wash.

* The most beautiful--my advisor said this about my reworking of the first half of Nice and Mean:

Really great job, Cake. Just really great.

(Well, she didn't say Cake. But you know.)

And it struck me: I may know a thing or two about this writing business. Which feels really, really great.

All this beauty--
We travelled all night
And drank the ocean dry
And watched the sun rise!