Author: Lisa Schnellinger

I’m always wary when in a parking garage. Women are trained to see them as places where rapists and muggers lurk, and even when they are well-lit they have a creepy ambience because of the slope and the narrow lanes.

Today I felt marginally safer because it was a crisp spring day, and the parking garage had plenty of daylight openings. I worried, though, about the people who saw me stalking around – would they think I was a car burglar?

No one seemed perturbed, though. I wandered slowly, perusing the angular architecture and the peek-a-views.

What I found is that I needed to keep my head up.

This was a place of juxtaposed bright and dark,

in paint and in light.

Of designs eroded into the roof drain pipes,

and concrete pillars.

Of external views becoming part of the garage itself,

even wisteria scenting the cement.

And trudging up the five levels, I found layers peeling away

until I reached the top.

That’s just what you have to do when you are in the dark: Keep climbing until you’re out of it.

We all carry in our heads a video clip of the librarian hushing us for talking. But during my sojourn into the Decatur public library, the loudest voices I heard were two staff members at the checkout desk.

Not that they were loud at all. It’s just that the entire building was so silent.

A lovely sound. The sound of knowledge.

All the patrons were absorbed reading or working at the inviting desks.

The staff moved noiselessly among the stacks and patrons. Even parents with their kids immersed in a new story were reading aloud quietly.

The architecture and decor throughout the building seemed designed to induce this silence.

So many solid angles and smooth curves that turned inward and stood firmly.

The books all waited patiently on their shelves or table displays, inviting us to have a peek.

The Reference shelves acknowledged the decades of information right on their cover spines.

I rolled out a microfilm newspaper just for the joy of seeing all those records so compactly stored.

I was delighted to see that Nancy Drew mysteries, first published in the 1930s and which I read as a child, still held a prominent place in the children’s section.

And equally delighted by the timeless sycamore tree guarding the entrance to the building.

Beauty doesn’t always leap out at you.

There’s a dance where it can be seen just by moving in more closely. Zooming in physically shows us details that we otherwise would miss.

On the grounds of a commercial building, you might at first see only an old semi trailer.

But when you move in and study it, paintings emerge.

You have to get very close to see the magic of the reflection on the handle of an old filing cabinet.

Even kudzu can reveal the secret flowers if you don’t shy away from it,

  

and weeds in the pavement cracks show off their fine hairs when your face is nearby.

So move your body if you want to see beauty. The closer you look, the more there is to see.

I didn’t expect trash to be this pretty.

Live Thrive’s Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM) DeKalb is new, to be sure, and exceedingly well-organized. The staff is helpful and friendly as they go about their work.

Exploring, I was amazed at how many things can be recycled or reclaimed, and it made me realize just how limited our neighborhood recycling pickup is. Of course, city recycling programs are a difficult undertaking – it takes a lot of space and labor to sort through mixed recycling, and contamination with non-recyclables can cause a whole batch to be rejected.

At CHaRM there’s no such sloppiness.

What’s brought in is carefully checked and goes into clearly labeled compartments.

They take many items that probably would otherwise end up in a landfill: monitors,

window glass,

fire extinguishers,

mattresses and tires,

plastics of all types,

books and CDs,

styrofoam,

and of course bottles and cans.

Somehow, seeing them clustered together like that made me appreciate all the labor that went into their manufacture. Graphic designers, engineers, chemists, project managers and scores of other people all had to be involved to produce these beautiful objects that we buy, use, and toss.

The whole place made me feel hopeful with its bounty.

Apparently these good vibes also induced a bird to make a nest right smack in the middle of everything – including some bits of styrofoam:

 

Our eyes get a special rest at nighttime: the absence of color.

And the presence of simple shapes.

All that overstimulation of a hyper-colored video world on our phones and monitors ends.

Now we can focus on the lines of shadows.

We can see ourselves in a clearer context.

The moon reminds us of how deeply we can bathe in darkness.

The violets sparkle as much as the stars.