I have a thing for the tragically beautiful; the kind of stuff that follows you around and won't let you forget it. I would like to hear some of these moments that you never forgot. For me, it was on Halloween--or rather All Hallows Eve as it's generally called here--and we were at the graveyard to place candles on my Grandfather's grave. I always enjoyed cemeteries and they're especially beautiful on that night as it is illuminated by candles and covered in flowers, so I looked around a lot. Then I spotted this unkempt bush of dead plants in a forgotten corner and I thought it looked odd so I checked it out. You'd never think it was a grave if you didn't look closer. The only marker was a tiny wooden cross of which the plaque bearing the name of the person resting there had long since fallen off and it was split diagonally from top almost all the way to the bottom. It had also toppled over. I mused over who might have been buried there and felt pity over how nobody seemed to have remembered or cared to take care of the grave of this seemingly completely forgotten person. So I grabbed the cross and shoved it back into the soil where it was supposed to be and as I did so, I noticed that in the middle of the pile of dead plants on the grave, a single red rose was growing. It was short and tiny, but exceptionally beautiful and had somehow managed to grow in late October. The picture of that grave and the rose is burned into my memory as is the melancholy I felt during that moment. It was--simply put--hauntingly beautiful.
I think old, abandoned buildings are beautiful, yet chilling, especially those that have a dark past like old prisons. I think the beauty of it is that incredible emotions and stories can be captured in a building, even if you never experienced them and will never know personally what actually happened long ago. Instead, you're just left to guess what kind of complex lives and situations existed in that place.
I was snowboarding on Mt. Hakoda in the Aomori prefecture of Japan. There is one huge gondola that takes you to the top. Then you can go down anywhere you choose. Usually I stayed with at least one other person for safety but a few times I ventured into the forest. Some locals told me once that there were spirits residing on the mountain. A military unit was once stationed there and got wiped out during a blizzard. I never saw any spirits but I would stop and watch the snow and fog drift between the trees over the untouched powder. When the fog was thick the trees would disappear within a few meters. It was absolutely quiet and beautiful. It felt like it would be inhabited by spirits and maybe it was.
The cosmic perspective. I seriously recommend that you search 'Cosmic Perspective Neil deGrasse Tyson' on YouTube and look at a few of the videos there and just reflect on the content provided in the videos. It's one of the most humbling things I've ever reflected on and I would like to share this because of that fact. The person talking about it in these videos (Neil deGrasse Tyson) is seriously worth looking into as well.
Hauntingly beautiful? Probably better out there but I'm just going to be lazy and go with an Opeth album cover:
At my old college there was a park by a river. At nighttime the place was amazing and terrifying all at once. The black water flowing past the pavilion, the cold wind, and the dark woods by the path all made it seem haunted. But I needed a place to escape the noise and pressure, and that place was perfect. I could get a good view of the night sky and think about life without being interrupted. It's one of the few things I miss about that college.
Gustave Dore's illustrations to The Divine Comedy and Poe's The Raven. I remember when I first saw them. Wow. Also: I always thought that Starry Night, as beautiful as it is, has a haunting feeling to it as well.
I was being dragged through some old Southern mansions on a tour, and saw a gorgeous, iron-wrought staircase... I love those, especially when they have chandeliers at the top~ I also love chandeliers, haha~ The cold, black, metal winding skywards~ too lovely~~
There's a lot, but to name just one, I'd have to say the abandoned structures in my area. There's an abandoned sanitarium near my house that I used to explore a few years ago, and it's so...beautiful. This is especially true with nature reclaiming the area, from the hundred something year old floors rotting and decaying away to vines and flora overtaking the cracks in the walls or patches of the collapsed roofs. It's strangely captivating to see something beautiful that's full of life coexist with something dark and full of death (if you see past the vandalism).
