people are beautiful (part I)

i've always been a night owl. i have few clear memories of childhood, but there are these flickers of the time from back before--when i had no real conception of the difference between boys and girls, and my baby brother and i shared a room. i distinctly remember being awake in the quietness of the night, my brother's round cheeks lit with the blue-white rays of the moon. i think i was around 4 years old at the time.
i remember thinking about how still it all was and wondered if anyone else in the world was awake. i enjoyed those moments of quiet. tip-toeing to the window to stare at the moon. but i also had ebbs and flows of unease about being alone in my consciousness.

this tendency to stare at the moon and speculate about any other awake, alert people in the world, has followed me throughout life. i've gazed at others who've slept, listened to their even breathing, and contemplated what dreams were unfolding and eddying about behind their closed eyelids. not two weeks ago, i was having these similar thoughts as i habitually fell asleep around 4am--usually right before the dawn touches the horizon.

it's strange because i was actually waking before the dawn my first week in Korea. there was that same stillness. that same cold light forming on the edges. the same pondering about waking people, but the silence was usually lightly cracked by the distant sound of a scooter or motorcycle. have i become a morning person?
(i haven't by the way.)

one morning, i moved slowly through the early morning shadows in my studio. i had an amazing sense of peace as i thought about how grateful i am about having food, having a bed, having my own kitchen, and all manner of those tangibles--those things that you forget to be thankful for with the busyness of life as an adult. i saw those things everyday, but... how to describe what happened this morning?
a translucent sheet was tugged slowly away from my eyes--so slowly that i didn't readily perceive it being pulled. and then things shifted into a kind of simplicity and clarity.

i heard something in between the beats of my languid blood and sleepiness.
people are beautiful. people are truly beautiful.

and i had these flashes of the people i love in my life--those that i love, those that i am beginning to love, all of those that are helping me to heal as we pour our lives into each other. some of these people don't even know that they're helping me to unfurl. i hate overstatement, but there was this inexplicable joy as i contemplated these people. Peter, Dave, Praise, Denise, my Umma, my Appa, SuJung, Dan, Danica, my Oppa, Cheryl, Lin, Cindy, Nina, Mia, Thad, and more. everyday there are more.