Connective Beauty
In my day-to-day life I find that I am devouring the world and its many entities as delicately as I can, and observing the small facets of life as intensely as I can. I find that there is a connective nerve between us all, braiding through every small moment. Often I find that it’s deeper than smiling at babies or muttering goodmorning to a stranger, but instead through the casualties of someone shaking out their umbrella or ordering their morning coffee. In a world so unjust and often cruel, there is something simple and beautiful in the mundane regularities strangers portray to the eye.
Image Courtesy: Instagram
There is a park about an hour out from where I live that resides in a small, country town. It’s quaint and it is surrounded by the water and small voices that roam it. I particularly enjoy skulking around this park just to perceive the tinier pockets of humanity. I never see people on their phones. Instead, I see older women sitting under the shade at an old, discolored picnic table, gossiping the same as my best friend and I would. The old women chatter on and while they do so there are children chirping about in the jungle gym, and yelping as their parents push them too high on the swing. In the whirling of it all, strangers pass by quietly and I sit on the park bench digesting it all. Sometimes–if I’m lucky–I will have a simple, or sometimes meaningful, conversation with someone.
In some ways, we’re all really just looking for that. Connection. The beauty of having a sheer moment with a stranger, only to never see them again. But to feel that you both intend to be good, and to find love in the mystery of the future; to cherish memories as they become murkier with time and fall senselessly into the vortex of the mind. Most of us have an unearthed desire to connect with the person next to us. In all the bustling of the world, I think many of us feel estranged from one another, when really we are tight-knit together. It’s a beautiful thing to know nothing about someone, but to find you both share intimate, vulnerable feelings about something in the world. Suddenly, you share a vein, a connection to your own numbed humanity, and you both absorb that of one another; the frail pieces that construct you as a person: your values, morals, memories, vulnerabilities, culture.
Image Courtesy: Instagram
I hope the woman at the end of the bar continues to talk to me, and the tourists in my town continue to tell me their endeavors. I hope strangers confide in other strangers, and let the vastness of the world fall to just the glowing circle that surrounds them in that moment of connectedness. We all need a bit more certainty in one another, and in the goodness strangers sustain in the world.
Strike out,
Isa Pullen
Editor: Amia King
Saint Augustine
Isa Pullen is a writer for St. Augustine’s Strike Magazine. She is often reading, journaling, and expressing herself creatively through clothes. Between writing she likes to travel, converse with strangers, and be in nature. You can find more of her writing and creativity on Substack: @beddinginthebathtub and Instagram: @spectatorofladybug
