Jaded

It was a harmless, almost idyllic kind of situation.  I was sipping what might well be my last iced Americano before the cool weather sets in on this day in early October on the patio of a very peaceful café on the UBC campus.  The weather was warm and sunny and I was beginning a new drawing, an enlargement of a Crimson Topaz Hummingbird from Colombia and Venezuela:

Cute, eh?  The under parts range between violet magenta and scintillating gold in colour depending on the light; the throat ranges from golden green to flaming orange.  I suddenly heard the song of an Anna's hummingbird coming from a small flowering tree nearby. I got up and looked and there they were flying off together.  I didn't see them clearly but the blue to green iridescence on their airborne bodies was unmistakable:

Neat, eh?

The hummingbirds appeared again and I made again every effort to notice them.  I was not alone on the patio.  A young man, likely a student:

 (his parents must be very proud of him!) was seated at the next table fixated on his laptop.  I don't know what he did with his cap and gown.  Maybe he sold them on eBay to help pay for his textbooks.  Standing further off was a young woman, also a likely student:

She must have left her cap and gown at home so she could show off her torn blue jeans.  Now, how's that for a pathetic fashion trend?  And it's only the middle and upper middle class kids who wear them.  I have also heard that brand new, and alaready torn (heaven forbid that she rip them up herself, she'd ruin her nails!) that they often are sold at three figures.  Ouch!  The young lady, and I use that term loosely as I am sure that she uses some other things rather loosely herself, was talking in a very loud English accent on her phone.  She admitted to suffering from a hangover.  I could hear every word she was saying but the content must have been pretty vapid because I forget almost everything she said.

 

I was the only one who troubled to notice the hummingbirds.  Knowing how they sound of course gives me an advantage as well as my love for birds and the joy I take in attempting to capture their colours in my art.  But even if you care little about them they are beautiful, worthy of being noticed and go generally unseen, undetected, unknown.  As the other many details of beauty that surround and inhabit our human lives.

 

Also like the small group of noisy young people who came and infested the bus stop a bit later on just as I was really paying attention and giving thanks for the sparkling blue of the sky.  I don't expect that any of these twenty-ish pre-hipsters even have within themselves the capacity of noticing the subtle beauty that inhabits and occupies all the space around us.  And likewise the two students.  It is almost as if we go around protecting and armoring ourselves against the beautiful reality of our day to day existence.  We put ourselves to sleep with alcohol, cigarettes, sex and other soporifics.  We make ourselves impervious.  At a deep primal level I think we really know that we have conspired and co-conspired to making ourselves deaf, blind and insensate.  We know the consequences.  We would not be able to bear the intensity.  For this reason we are jaded.