Five Good Things, From Me To You

Ways of validating beauty (and joy) during bat-shit crazy, challenging times. More good things to add? Please, be my guest in the Comments!

I was fortunate enough to visit Japan in December. Talk about a kind of people who know how to create serenity, even in the midst of a geologically violent country. Pictured: Kanazawa’s Kenrokuen Gardens, constructed by one family over two centuries, and then opened to the public in 1871. Quietly astonishing. Photo: MC.

In a June 2024 post (On Seeking And Choosing Ways Forward) I wrote about finding my pathway for creating Bright Side Writings. Which I summed up as choosing paths that lead into darkness, but towards brightness. In the short seven months since then however, it seems that darkness has been redoubling its efforts to blot out light. Catastrophic levels of floods and fires are becoming a ‘new normal’, as news cycles careeen towards them - only to then get interrupted by eruptions of human violence that puncture across national, regional, local, and inter-personal lines.

I barely have to look to find terror clear and present in the world around me.

So, while I’ve always felt drawn towards beauty, in all its shapes and forms, I’m finding that lately this feels more important than ever. I’ve gone beyond merely liking beauty. I find I NEED it. No matter how blurry it may be in the murk and fog, I need something to reach for, out there ahead of me. To grasp occasionally, and on good days - hold on to - in order to never lose sight of being grateful, and giving thanks.

Recently, my friend José Colón posted the following on FB:

“Share something good with me that has zero to do with politics or the world going utterly bonkers.”

I love that he posted this, in the first place. And I love what happened. He received a flood of responses. From cutesy kitty & puppy pics, to images of tranquil lakes and fresh snow, to words of love and comfort, or just rubbishy bits of nonsense like the news of a man with twenty plastic horses inserted in his rectum being admitted to a hospital where, “Doctors described his condition as stable.”

So, having already been thinking about ‘good news’ - in case you too have been finding life a bit dark of late - and then being spurred on by José’s action, I’d like to share Five Good Things with you today. I don’t promise easiness. But goodness? Sure. And I don’t have any expert qualifications for sharing, apart from being a (fellow) human being. One who would prefer to see ‘our differences’ as ‘a variety of multi-facetted perspectives’, instead. I take my lead from Mother Nature on this. Biodiversity creates the most robust and resilient systems, because difference is a strengthening agent.

In a parallel breath though, I don’t believe ugliness or darkness can be ‘removed’ by burying one’s head in the sand. Because hiding doesn’t make darkness disappear - it simply postpones the perception / reception of it. And at the other end of the spectrum, drowning oneself in beauty is no lasting solution either. It becomes a balancing act; of learning how to live with both, without getting lost in either. Herewith, a few things that I find work for me.

Multicoloured leaves in Kanazawa, muticoloured koi fish in Tokyo. Photos: MC.

1: Get present to history, and stuff-much-older-than-you, regularly

This one’s kinda’ surprised me, as it’s only a fairly recent thought. After growing up in Australia and then living in the United States - both “New World” places (using ‘old school’ terminologies), and now living in Northern Europe for many years, a so-called “Old World” place, I’m realising the important word is “Old,” regardless of geography. Let me explain.

I noticed during Trump’s first term, that eventually stand-up comedians gave up trying to poke fun at him. For them it was a losing battle, because each day it seemed, he would come out with some new, far crazier pronouncement than anything they could have scripted, or even ad-libbed, the day before. And having spent 14 years in the US, I know how these things can pound you over and over as they cycle through the news. Since his re-election and return to office however, for me, his antics have turned darker. In the parlance of these days, now his words really trigger me.

WHAT? HE’S ACTUALLY SERIOUS ABOUT BUYING GREENLAND?! WHAT? HE’S JUST FROZEN THE DISBURSEMENT OF TRILLIONS?! WHAT? HE’S JUST UNFROZEN THE FREEZING?! WHAT? HE INTENDS TO TURN PALESTINE INTO THE RIVIERA OF THE MIDDLE EAST?! WHAT? WHAT? WHAT???

De Grote Markt, Brussels, January 2025. Photo: MC.

Bust of an Egyptian Dignitary from the New Kingdom in polychrome marbles. From around 1780. Marc Maison. An Icthyosaur fossil (background) with a mammoth's leg (foreground). Stone gallery.

As it happens though, while these and other global madnesses were occuring during the last weeks and months I’ve spent time with very old trees, wandered cobblestoned paths, and visited Brussels’ Grote Markt - or Grand Place - which dates from the 17th Century. I’ve also contemplated artworks including a bust created in six colours of marble in 1780, a mammoth’s leg, and a fossil of a 180 million year-old, pregnant-with-twins Ichthyosaur - all while visiting Brussels’ BRAFA Art Fair.

Even while writing these words, my eyes can flick across gigantic ceiling beams and my toes are free to wiggle on broad, worn-smooth floorboards that were installed over 400 years ago, in our Amsterdam apartment. And you know what? I’ve realised these things help to ground me and consider much bigger pictures that far transcend constructs like Europe, or America, or Australia. Because, after all, even these geographical name-constructs are mere blips on timelines that stretch back to woolly mammoths, dinosaurs and exploding stars.

Possible actions:

• Converse with someone much older than you about what their youth was like.

• Go to a museum. Spend time browsing unfamiliar segments of history.

• Seek out a tree. Engage with it. Really take it all in - its bark, its branches, its leaves, and all the many years of work and staying power it has taken to appear exactly in this way, before you today.
  ZachBushMD expresses this as follows: “If all else fails, find a tree. Large or small, young or old, for they are story-bearers. When fractals of light move through leaves and branches, and we bear witness to this dance, we receive a neurologic reprogramming to remember our original design. To see not only the tree as it is, but to see ourselves as an echo of its story.”

• Go to a mountain. Lie down on it with your full body. Feel the earth.

• Go to a beach. Let the waves speak to you. What are they saying?

• Gaze at the stars. Lose yourself in them.

• Acknowledge that before too long, the triggers of today will float off and disappear into the ether, far away and beyond the horizon. Other joys / events / surprises will crowd on in to take their place. Ad infinitum.

• And if NONE of these things are working ANY kind of magic upon you, at least allow yourself a wry smile at W. Somerset Maugham’s take on the Riviera as: “A sunny place for shady people.”
  

2: Tread carefully, the fine lines between beauty and terror

Via Sarah Wilson I came across this wonderful quote from “Rainer’s Book of Hours”, by Rainer Maria Rilke:

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

And this really landed for me, in the sense of… neither of these polarities should eclipse the other. But both are real, and both have intrinsic value.

Just keep going. That's the most important part.

Sharing some love & laughter (and sunburn!) with Cy O’Neal. SoHo, NYC, 2004-ish. Photo: MC.

This had been expressed to me as well, many years ago, by one of my life mentors, the incredible Cy O’Neal from Friends In Deed in New York (who I also wrote about in Notes From Energetic Spaces) who taught me an invaluable lesson while our dear friend Chad was undergoing various treatments for lymphoma.

(Friends In Deed was an extraordinary thing - a crisis center providing emotional and spiritual support for anyone with an HIV/AIDS diagnosis, cancer or any other life-threatening physical illness… any caregivers, family and friends of those who were ill… or anyone dealing with grief and bereavement. All services were free. It was built by Cy O’Neal and filmmaker Mike Nichols, and helped untold thousands of people. A shining example of New York City at its finest.)

After Chad’s sister and mother and myself witnessed lab technicians in radioactive-protective suits wheeling in canisters of chemotheraphy to administer directly into Chad’s brain, I think our collective level of terror hit its zenith. To this day I’m still amazed by the way Cy was able to calm us and steer us through this terror.

“Yes. Right. I get it,” she nodded, gathering each of us, in turn, in her gaze. “Physically, medically, emotionally, it doesn’t get much tougher than this. This is brutal. And yet, in exactly the same moment something else is also true. There is still hope. These doctors and technicians are delivering this treatment because they believe it should improve Chad’s condition. So your job, which is not an easy one, is to steer a path, one slow step at a time, between these two realities. This is as terrifying as it gets - AND - there is hope. One breath at a time. And this. Exhale. And this. Inhale. And this. Exhale. And this. Inhale. And onwards. And if you tread slowly and carefully and don’t lose your balance, eventually you’ll make it to the other side, and whatever that other side shows you will be real and will be true.”

What became real and true in the weeks that followed was that Chad’s illness was too extreme for any amount of chemo or any kind of doctor to defeat, and Chad died. It doesn’t get much more ‘real and true’ than that, in my experience. But it was Cy’s words that helped me (and us) to process all of that, in those hardest moments, and they still help me to this day.

Chad Courtney and Shelly Cox. Two beautiful, radiant souls and very dear friends, who departed from the rest of us, way too soon. Photo: Gregory Harvey (I think).

Possible actions:

• Quit the doom scrolling. Limit your exposure to the news. (Again, I’m not saying, “Shut it off altogether,” but do limit exposure, if that’s what you feel you need.)

• Search out things that make you laugh, instead. I have something of a go-to place for this on YouTube, which is Letters Live, which kinda’ has a smattering of everything. Hysterically funny letters, loving letters, ancient letters, inspiring letters, poignant letters, and many more. I’m putting a few favourites here for you. Quit doom scrolling. But if scroll you must, then try these instead.
  
  A SELECTION OF LETTERS LIVE READINGS

  Dagmara Domińczyk reads a hilarious letter to a recorder.
  Olivia Colman reads an impassioned plea from three Elvis fans.
  Gillian Anderson performs a letter by Helen Keller.
  Benedict Cumberbatch reads the best cover letter ever written.
  Miriam Margolyes and Clarke Peters read some steamy letters between Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller.

Screenshot from YouTube of Olivia Colman reading on Letters Live.

3: Dive into colour - allow colours to surprise you

After writing about colour previously, I want to nip one thought in the bud, immediately. If you experience any form of colour blindness, please don’t “skip this section as not applying to you”. Why? Because… because okay I’ll share a personal thing: I have a really, like really crappy sense of smell. Not - since Covid. And not - since coke. Since being a baby who successfully managed to crawl off a balcony and hit my head. Thunk. HOWEVER - I can still taste. Sure, I miss most of the aromatics, but there is plenty about food and drink and dark chocolate that I adore. Moving on!

A formidably gorgeous chunk of Lapis Lazuli. Photo courtesy of Stone gallery.

I delved into colour last year, in three posts entitled A Splash Of Colour (In Your Day) - Part One, Part Two and Part Three. And what I’ve discovered is that colour is a gift that just keeps giving, in the most amazing and unexpected ways. Even just earlier today, my Canadian writer friend and colleague Deepam shared the following video with me, having no idea that I was wanting to write a paragraph or two on colour, for this post.

The Library of Rare Colours is a five minute video about the Forbes Pigment Collection. Created by the prolific and highly popular science presenter Tom Scott, featuring Narayan Khandekar, Director of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Fascinating!

A selection from the Forbes Pigment Collection. Photo: Caitlin Cunningham Photography.

In fact, in a short email exchange with Narayan - (we actually went to high school together, in the same year, in Australia. What are the chances, right?!) - anyway, he expressed the following:

“People are fascinated by colour, and thinking about it led me to the earliest paintings people made. These early humans were living incredibly hard lives in places like Australia and the Lascaux region, but they still found time to make art and they chose colour to tell their stories. It’s amazing to think that art and colour are core to what it is to be a person. I think that is why people love colour so deeply, it is part of their essence.”
- Narayan Khandekar

So. If the world is giving you the wobbles of late, and you feel like you could benefit from getting back in touch with your ‘essence’, here are some thoughts.

Possible actions:

• Watch The Library of Rare Colours. Choose any colour that gets mentioned, and begin investigating, in books, in nature, online, or out and about in your surroundings. See where this colour leads you.

• Head over to Pantone’s ‘universal language of colour’, and choose a few you love. Any ideas why you love them? Any ideas why you DISlike other colours? Using coloured pencils, draw or sketch some of your thoughts. Or write them down.

• Go through some of your wardrobe choices, explorer style. Do you have any ideas about colours that look good on you, and colours that don’t? Have you ever thought about why you’re drawn to these colours, or perhaps averted from certain others? (And colour-blind-spectrum friends: see this as an opportunity! Ask a colour-conversant friend to come and help you out. We all like to be needed, for all kinds of reasons. Suggest to a friend that you really need some help with this!)

4: Stash some cash somewhere. And keep fit.

On August 14th, 2003, a tree’s leaves and branches, just being tree-ish by wafting and tossing in the breeze, came in contact with some electrical cables in Ohio, USA. This rapidly led to a breakdown of the entire electrical grid across parts of the midwestern and northeastern United States and parts of Canada. And within the space of around six seconds, roughly 55 million people found themselves without power, on a hot and sticky summer’s afternoon. I was one of those many millions, in New York City at the time, staying in the East Village at my friend Elizabeth’s apartment, while she was away, touring with her rock band.

In some areas, power came back within about 29 hours. But in grungy Alphabet City where I was staying? Make that more in the region of three to four entire days. I mean sure the first night was fun! It was novel and unusual in a spooky kinda’ way, and as I’d experienced previously, I found New Yorkers going out of their way to help each other - to check in on neighbours, to be courteous while waiting in lines, to be kind to one another. An ‘unusual evening’ might be one thing, but then four days became a loooooonnngg time in New York City. A long time of ATMs-gone-dark. Of no mobile phone reception (or recharging possibilities). Of elevators and electrically-operated doors remaining steadfastly shut. And a really long time to not be able to buy food because YOU DID NOT HAVE ANY CASH.

Are you reading me here?

To back up a bit, to Cy’s words. What might that thing be, right in the center, glowing on the dividing line between terror and beauy? I suspect it might be: TRUTH.

Systems are unravelling around us - not only in the United States - and this process is accelerating. I’m not being alarmist and I’m not trying to scare you. I am stating a truth. Electrical grids are getting overloaded from, amongst other factors, the insatiable demands of Artificial Intelligence. (Short aside: If you’re a brain surgeon using AI to help you during a challenging operation, please continue. If you’re using it to fake research for an exam you’re taking… I have no words beyond: Grow a conscience.) Banks are being hacked, whole “secure” goverment departments are getting hacked, flights are getting grounded and trains stalled because of ‘system interferences’.

Elements of an Emergency Kit, worth having to hand. Photo: The New York Times

So when (not if), something happens to the digital, swipe-for-everything monetary system that surrounds us, do you want to end up going hungry? Or would you like to be prepared? Then stash some cash somewhere. Sooner than later. Or buy some (18k or higher) gold, and stash (or wear) that. Gold has been the longest, consistently tradeable commodity in human history, and that situation certainly ain’t changing any time soon. Ever wondered what Grandpa’s gold ring, or Grandma’s gold chain you inherited are worth? Stop wondering. Get them (reliably) valued, so you know what you have in your hands. Keep those possessions safe. (Bearing in mind that sometimes, ‘on your body’ is actually the safest place.)

While mentioning bodies, please keep as fit as you can, relative to your personal, physical situation. If the occasion arises where you find yourself needing to move 'much faster than previously anticipated’, again, you don’t want to be unprepared.

Possible actions:

• Tune in to Collapse Life - I recommend this Substack for being incredibly level-headed and pragmatic about the times we’re living through. It can be confronting, I will say that up front. But I’d much prefer you face clear-sighted information like this, that get caught up in the misinformational loops of doom scrolling.

• Turn down the ‘seriousness’ level of ‘keeping fit’. Go for a walk. Take a bike ride. Go out dancing with friends, and dance your socks off. Keep yourself in motion, is all. So when a moment comes when you NEED to move, you’ll know you CAN.

5: Invite moments of stillness & unstoppable beauty.
Breathe in, give thanks, move on.

In December, my husband Mart and I had the professional and personal pleasure to work with an extraordinary team comprised of photographer, model, make-up artist, stylist, photo company & event producer. (We had been invited to supply jewellery.) Around the same time, two seemingly unrelated words sorta’ dropped into my head. ‘Unstoppable’ and ‘beauty’. I wrote a few lines onwards from there, edited them to a particular format, submitted them to a literary journal, and was delighted to have my piece accepted. You can read it over at 50 Word Stories.

Many thanks to Laurence, Ava, Katerina & Jason, for your amazing work. I look forward to crediting you fully once the time is right!

But then it also felt like it fit with a new look in a new year, for Statement Jewels, Mart’s company, so I turned it into a card and a bookmark to use in our booth at Naarden the Art Fair in January.

(If you’d like a few actual bookmarks, by all means email me your physical address and I’ll be happy to send you a few.)

My extremely short story, or poem reads:

Unstoppable Beauty?

Try the glistening sun-splash of a wave as it breaks,
or the brightness of close friends as they all laugh together.

Plumb a gemstone’s depths as it glimmers, shines and glows,
or gaze in awe as a snowflake dazzles purity and perfection.

In such moments, it’s waiting for you there.

So… I think my Fifth Good Thing kinda’ speaks for itself. I don’t need to give you any Possible Actions beyond: Stay Open. Stay Curious.

I hope you have been able to find some good things in this post. And to repeat my invitation up top… no matter how small or how large, if you feel like you have some additional ‘good things’ to share, please do so in the Comments section below. Every little bit helps!

Love and light,

Matthew.

And a last-minute plug… This is a wonderful cause, with an excellent array of writing workshops available. You’ll even find a few offerings from me! So don’t miss out. Explore the entire calendar here!