some beauty from today and yesterday

I am sitting on my bed, satsuma peel on my right hand and general mess on my left, thanking of how beautiful a fruit satsumas are, particularly in the sunlight.

I cycled back from Charmaine's house on my longest cycle through London yet, about an hour from Baron's Court back up to Highgate, but it flew by so quickly, mostly because I was absorbed by how beautiful everything was. I went through Hyde Park and had a brief glimpse into the army and horse building, a looked up as the sun gleamed on the Albert Memorial, I saw the Christmas lights all ready for the celebration season up along Oxford Street, and smelt fresh croissants as I went past the Lidl in Kentish Town. London is built beautifully, but it also has beautiful moments when the traffic isn't packed and people are less frantic (Perhaps because it is a Saturday? Or the frantic people are still in bed, exhausted from yesterday's frantic-ness?)

My mind has been on beauty a lot this morning - I am reading an article by Susan Sontag on Posters, and she talks about how a defining feature is their aestheticisation of information, how in some cases they exist as beautiful (art?) objects in their own right.

Yesterday I went to the Wellcome Collection with Pierre - we spent most of our time in the museum shop, and I asked if he could have three books (and only three) from the shop which he'd choose. He recommended 'The Architecture of Happiness' as one of my three, which after hearing his glowing review I promptly bought of ebay for a quarter of the museum shop price. After reading an excerpt of it I now want to read all things Alain de Botton:

“What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.”
― Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

In Wales Jacob and I tried to think up the things that made a good day - things like prayer, doing something difficult, gratitude, self-reflection, movement of some kind, spending quality time and having quality communication with God and other people... and doing something beautiful. I am feeling very much that I've been fortunate to have lots of beautiful things done to me this morning, like seeing the misty morning air settle on the brick buildings of Mayfair and having such a sweet satsuma. I wonder if peeling a satsuma can be considered a beautiful thing?

Here's a beautiful thing for you - murmuration.