decemberthirty | Some loveliness for Thursday

So. It seems there has been a lack of beauty lately. I spent all day yesterday working with agonizing slowness to claw my way out from under a mountain of end-of-quarter grading. In the larger world, the events unfolding at Penn State this week are spewing so much ugliness that I want to tear up my resume and burn my diploma.

Clearly the solution to this is to spread beauty instead. So here are some beautiful things for you, my friends:

Poetry

Here is a beautiful blog, called pizzicati of hosanna, and composed entirely of recordings of poems read by Nic Sebastian. I don't know who Nic Sebastian is other than a person with a gorgeous voice, but I could listen to these readings for hours. My favorite may be the reading of "Orchard" by H.D., but they are all wonderful: soothing and lovely.

Painting

I recently came across the work of Japanese painter Matazo Kayama, who was born in Kyoto in 1927 and died in 2004. I have only seen reproductions of his work, but I would love to see these paintings in person.

Singing

Perhaps this video has already gone viral and everyone has seen it before, but I had never seen or heard it before my mother shared it on facebook this morning. If something has already made its way to my mother, there's a good chance the rest of the internet is already aware of it. But I wasn't aware of it, and the sound of these three voices was just the sort of loveliness I needed this morning.

Enjoy! And please feel encouraged to share any beauty that you've come across lately.