The Beauty of Different

16. Read 30 books I haven’t read before (in addition to the above) and blog about them. (25/30)

The Beauty of Different: Observations of a Confident Misfit
by Karen Walrond

I mentioned this book in my one-day-late New Year's post.  Karen Walrond of Chookooloonks is one of my favorite bloggers and I've been dying to get this book since it came out but, of course, funds have been low so I planned to get it with a Christmas gift card (which I did). 

I was trying to describe this book and my thoughts on Karen to my dad on Sunday night and there were two key points I found myself trying to get across:

1 - For her 1,000 faces project, the results are amazing.  There has to be something about her that gets these people to relax and shine.  When I look at her face portraits, I honestly feel like I know a little bit about that person - what they must be like, what makes them laugh, what they like to eat.  I don't know how she pulls off this magic, but my guess is that it's something about her as a person that makes these folks' true selves shine through.  This brings me to...

2 - I feel like Karen is the type of person who would make you feel like you've truly exhaled for the first time in years after spending five minutes with her.  Ever have that kind of person for a friend?  My friend Mike is like that for me.  I would conclude another work week and various life activities, drive the 3+ hours to Baltimore, walk into his apartment, and within five minutes I would feel my heart rate slow and the muscles in my face relax as my entire body and being felt truly relaxed for the first time since the last time I was in Baltimore.  I think Karen must be like that.

This book brought me to tears several times because it's so compelling and inspiring.  (I even started my journal yesterday.  It's a meek start, to be sure, but it's a start.)  It reminds me of one of my favorite poems, "The Archaic Torso of Apollo" by Rainer Marie Rilke (which I previously wrote about, also during New Year's time):

Archaic Torso of Apollo
by Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Stephen Mitchell

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

~~~

Obviously, what is most compelling about that poem is its closing line - and that's how I felt reading Karen's book.  "You must change your life" was like a quiet drum beat throughout the entire text.

This book (and nearly everything Karen writes) makes me want to be more authentic, to figure out who I am and what I should be doing - and then go do it the best I can.  If you feel yourself in the need of inspiration (or just a really good, entertaining read with beautiful accompanying photographs), get this book.  Even if you don't think you need inspiration, go get this book.  You'll find inspiration you didn't realize you were looking for.

Comments

[Megan (Best of Fates)]

Okay, I've put off buying it because I'm a stickler for waiting for books to hit my used bookstore, but I'm going to have to buy that one!