Life After Peace Corps

Chaotic Beauty

Most people find nature most beautiful when it was tamed, arranged, and dressed up in an English or Japanese garden: flowers in groups and rows and trees pruned to smooth green curves. For the longest time, I could not understand why I did not see them beautiful. When everyone was eager to watch Cherry Blossom in DC, I turned to a small creek by my neighborhood, enjoyed watching the disorderly growth of wild daffodils.

When I lived in Azerbaijan, I accidentally discovered a wild area that was forgotten by the locals. That place really had nothing to look at, only weeds and wild desert flowers grew. But when I entered to that place, birds erupted under my feet. Vines twisted and tangled, spreading out in absolute disarray. Rather than admiring all the cultivated flowers in the park, I, once again, found myself kept going back to that secret place, enjoying its untamed beauty. For most people, that place was untidy and ugly, but for me the place was alive and chaotically BEAUTIFUL! In fact, I like that place so much that I wrote about it and the article was later published in Peace Corps’s magazine. (My wilderness in Sumgayit)

These days in DC area by the National Mall, tourists were everywhere to photograph the explosive display of cherry blossoms. I loved watching the bloom as well, but I much appreciated when the flowers began to wither, millions of ting pink petals blowing away by wind, drifting to whatever direction the breeze sent them. The chaotic sight pleased me.

The essence of the earth’s beauty lies in disorder.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a book called Nature’s Chaos, published by Eliot Porter, a famous nature photographer. When I finished the book, I had the most satisfactory smile, I know I am not crazy….