that is all I know, and all I need to know

Ordinary Things by Ana Guardia (Trust 30 Prompt 25)

“Every artist was first an amateur.” Ralph Waldo Emerson 

• To be an artist one has to find beauty in ordinary things. Find 10 things of great beauty in the landscape that surrounds you. For example, crumple sheets on your bed in the morning, the smell of coffee making its way around a busy office.

I am in my living room - it's an ordinary evening. The TV is showing something ridiculous. I'm on my laptop, as almost always. And outside my window, in the sliver of space between the curtain and the wall, the sky is a swirl of greys and vivid pinks. 

I can see my toenails peeking out just beyond the edge of my laptop, and they match the deepening pinks of the sky. 

In my container garden outside, the tomatoes, despite all of my many years as a tomato plant murderer, are plump, green and so full of that sharp promising 'fresh tomato' smell that I want to bite straight into their juicy goodness, but I settle for crushing a leaf between my fingers so the smell moves with me. 

I taste a spoonful of Krema Greek style strawberry yogourt. It's dense creaminess coats my mouth with a pleasure so deep I can feel the taste of it. It's a decadence that defies it's simpleness. 

My piano stands to the left of me - gleaming warm and brown. More than music it fills the room with memories - some reaching back to a trio of girls singing into a tape recorder microphone. Some as fresh as my dear friend The Dutchman picking out the melody to '100 Years' just last night. Such a beautiful song. 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez' 100 Years of Solitude lays on my bedroom floor, spine cracking from the way it fell last night as I melted into sleep without putting it down. I will do the same tonight - disappearing into the humid poetry in those pages. 

Most beautiful of all, BB1 comes home. And he sits with me. And chats. He teases me and laughs. It's the most beautiful sound in all the world - his low chuckle. It's one of the genes he shares with his baby brother, that awesome laugh. 

My life is full of beauty, and I try to be aware of that every day. I live in a beautiful city full of things that stimulate - in a good way - all of my senses. I walk under spreading oaks. I stop and smell the roses. I sit by the ocean and let it's vastness carry my concerns away. And I know that real beauty is not in things but in the people I love.