Not one but two
beautiful moments in as many weeks. Long one here, be warned.

Last week it pissed down with rain. I was standing at the kitchen window looking out. Now this is no ordinary looking out - this is looking out by a woman who has been registered blind for ten years due to losing a very large percentage of her eyesight. So the stuff you guys get to see is often totally lost on me.
However I still like my garden and often attempt to grow stuff in it that is not weeds. At the moment there is an area close to the house which is covered in nasturtiums (probably spelled that one wrong.) They are bright orange and yellow flowers with leaves shaped (I think) rather like the old Skips crisps, but larger, sometimes the size of the palm of your hand and bigger - and the stem attaches at the middle of the underside, so they can look like little scalloped dishes on a stem.
I was gawping at the rain on the plants with the aid of my trusty Canon digital SLR, which is how I get to see the finer detail of the world these days. I can see things largely better through the viewfinder than I can unaided. Not so great for getting around (impractical !) but for moments when time is on your side and you're not doing anything much it's good. And you can always upload it to a pooter and see stuff on a big screen that you never even knew was there.
The rain was absolutely hammering down, but the sun was out in the way the sun often is during summer showers. The nasturtiums were getting a total pasting from the downpour, but the surface of the leaves is quite water repellent and they have a sort of well in the centre that forms the dish shape. A ray of sun was illuminating the group of leaves in my viewfinder right as I was looking at them - result ! Press to record some video I think.
Drops of water were pooling in the centre of the leaves and forming like water on a hot stove top in the brightest silver, with the sun lighting them up, then being smashed off by the continuing rain. They looked like little sparkling jewels leaping around, it was amazing. When the shower tailed off I was still looking, and one leaf had a huge drop of water in the middle. Slowly the rain petered out and as it did, the silver drop began to swell up. I watched it get bigger and bigger as the shower ended, then eventually weight and gravity took its toll and the water over flowed the leaf edge in a bright silver stream.
When I uploaded this to my mac and slowed the footage down, it was even more beautiful.

Second beautiful moment was a couple of weeks ago when the group of visually impaired bods I am in a band with did a fundraising gig at the local blind club. I run the band / workshop as such, it's a lot of work (which I won't go into) and every one in it is of differing abilities (read: some of the members are a bit crap) so it can be a hard ole grind sometimes that I often don't enjoy anymore. Luckily my fiance (who is also in it) and I are in another band also which is very good, so all is not lost in terms of our own artistic fulfilment. Leading up to this gig (we rehearsed for six months, that'll give you an idea of the level of the thing) I had been wondering what the hell I was still doing it for, as it was proving hard to get through to some of the members what was needed and how they could improve (without coming out and saying, "You're shit, tighten up !", which under the circumstances I feel would be unfair). Politics within and around the whole thing weren't helping either.
But then on the night I got an absolute idea of what made it all worth it.
One of our members is a fifty something school teacher-like prim and proper lady who has Rentinitus Pigmentosa. She has grown up kids who don't really appreciate her anymore or help her much with her decreasing eyesight. She's just got her first guide dog and is going through all the stuff associated with learning how to work with her and so on. Her first husband died from cancer when they were very much in love after she nursed him through it, and her second treated her like total dirt, cheated and left her high and dry and absolutely destroyed any confidence she might of once had. The other female member of the band is a bit of an attention seeker and can often criticise this lady when she really should keep her mind on her own lack of talent, so our fifty something lady is often unsure of her own abilities. She's very shy and constantly worries about what people think of her.
But since working with her in the band over the last couple of years I have seen her utterly blossom, with a sex kitten in there clawing to get out. She now sings songs she never ever thought she would (we never thought she would either) and gives it the berries every single time. The crowning example being her at the gig singing "Black Night" by Deep Purple, giving it two hundred percent, whilst my fiance (used to such things) gave it a shredding guitar solo, and the rest of the band plus a crowd of fifty or so sighted and non sighted people alike shouted gleefully along with the riffs. She loved it, they loved it. She absolutely glowed, no kidding. It was a truly beautiful moment and it made me realise why I am still doing it.

More cheese, Vicar ? ;)
(womanwhocanonlylivewithdogs, Sun 8 Aug 2010, 16:15, 2 replies)

Aww, they sound lovely
The one about the camera viewfinder really made me think - not sure that I would have taken the time and effort to sit and notice something like that. Thanks for making me look again - maybe as a partially sighted person you sometimes see more?
(Puddle of Sugar was still wallpapering on, Sun 8 Aug 2010, 18:30, closed)

Front page ...
for you Missus!

/clickety click.
(Que?, Mon 9 Aug 2010, 5:25, closed)