[adam]

Same thing; the world seems better because the exertion has caused an endorphin rush, not because it has changed.

Another layer: I feel like virtually anything can be beautiful, and I don't mean that in some lovey-dovey cheeseball embrace-the-universe way. I mean: photography has shown me that careful composition can make an interesting image out of the most mundane things. That any object can be interesting if you approach it correctly. Get close to it, get far from it, crop it here, just look at this portion of it, juxtapose that bit against the sky, against that tree, look at it with this person in the foreground. One of the camera or film companies ran an ad, "Even a parking lot can be beautiful." Damn straight. We've all come to appreciate the sensibility of the worn, the broken-down, the old and rusty and used, the abandoned. Electric wires crossing the sky. Concrete overpasses. Of course, as intrusions on nature it's easy to villainize these things, to lament their presence. It's harder to find their beauty, but it's there. Rotate your perspective, mentally, literally, figuratively.
I have to use a couple of movie comparisons. I sort of dislike this because there are people I like and respect who dislike these movies, so it risks being counter-productive to refer to them, but if I'm going to mention Nine Inch Nails and pot cookies I don't think I can do much further harm with a few pop culture references.
The first is the scene in American Beauty in which the kid plays the video of the bag blowing in the wind. I want to make love to that scene, because it absolutely, utterly nailed something that I have felt and completely despaired of ever being able to articulate. "I feel like there's so much beauty in the world that my heart is going to break." (from memory, might be wrong, don't care). Motherfucking amen. I've been there, I've desperately wanted to put it into words, to images, to something, to translate it, to communicate it, and I thought it was too subtle, too abstract, too vague. That scene nails it perfectly. The bag blowing in the wind as the carrier for the feeling, the words I quoted as the description. That's it.
The second is Wes Anderson movies in general. I adore Wes Anderson movies. I have friends I love who seem to hate them, and I can't really understand that, because his movies seem to embody this trick, this twist. They are real life, but they are real life swiveled so that every thing is a little funnier, a little sadder, a little prettier, better composed and framed. I feel like Wes Anderson is putting my mind down on film, and when my friend talks about hating one of his films I get sad because I feel like they're unknowingly hating me. But there it is, man, that's the whole deal: that our sorrows and breakdowns and triumphs and loves and lovers are all tragic and absurd and beautiful and poetic all at once. All you have to do is look at them from the right angle.

And there's something about it that ties into a child-like sense of wonder. I think we've all still got that but that we suppress it. It's a normal part of being an adult. But I think with a little effort you can turn those suppression actions off.
It has been many years since those drives. I have been through a few cars; sold my most recent one. I was feeling like it was the right thing to do, environmentally speaking - no judgment if you are unable, we all have responsibilities and sometimes the alternatives aren't workable. But I changed jobs, and I take the bus now. The bus is a tough challenge, because it's like driving, in all the mundane senses, with all the amazing fun shit about driving excised. Being packed in there like sardines when the weather is bad, when you're cold and wet, when the people around you are grumpy, it's tough to find the beauty. But, here's the thing, it's always there. Sometimes you can't do it, sometimes you can't remove yourself enough from the shit in your life, because we all have shit in our lives somedays, but it's not because beauty is not on that bus with you. Rotate, mentally crop, frame, compose the image. Look out that little cracked open window up at the trees and bricks and sky. Look at that person and understand that they're starring in their own series of tragedies and comedies, and that this is a moment where you're in their movie. Observe them. Read their cares on their faces. Be present. Recognize that these in-between moments can count for as much as you let them. Recognize that the perfection of the moment (or it's absence) is something going on inside your head. Recognize that you can reframe this instant into the most beautiful version of it, that there's something there in front of you that is interesting, or pretty, or sad. There is always something to engage with. There is always something.

I was talking to a friend of mine about this stuff, bouncing ideas off them, and I had really focused on the idea of importance, that every moment is important, or can be important if you want to let it be important. She called me out on the bullshit of that, and I see that. I see there is a certain bullshit to this. But I also know that in my head truth and beauty and importance are all sort of tangled up. And I'm not sure that is a set of beliefs I'd like to defend, philosophically. That is a bigger topic than I want to tackle, right now. But I can tell you how it feels. I keep on feeling like there's something important going on all around me and that it's my responsibility to point at it, and that thing has to do with beauty. Like, every sunset and every moment when the light hits the trees a certain way, when the wind is in the leaves, when I hear a musician do something right, when you hold someone's hand, when you kiss them, when you laugh your ass off with a friend, when you dream, that all this is worth saving. That it's all going to go, all going to be lost, that it seems very likely that someday there won't be any more humans and all this will be so far lost as to have never existed and that I want to know that I didn't neglect it, that I didn't let it thoughtlessly slip away, that I held on and loved it and cherished it as best I could, and that hopefully I helped other people feel it more than I hindered it.