Welcome to Life Is So Beautiful: It’s a handcrafted, non-AI-generated, free-range and artisanal weekly shotglass of hope and aspiration, lovingly curated by Hugh Hollowell (that’s me!), and is devoted to the belief that our hope for survival in this brutal world is rooted in finding the beauty that is everywhere, but sometimes hard to find.

I hope you enjoy it. - HH

Hey y'all!

I have a favorite coffee cup.

It’s a meadow green mug, made by Fiestaware, and is huge - it holds 18 ounces of coffee and looks like this. It’s thick and heavy, which is part of the attraction, but I have 6 mugs that are all identical, except they are different colors. And apparently, the meadow green one is my favorite.

I have acquired them piecemeal, at thrift stores and antique malls and flea markets, in various colors.I know you can buy them new, but part of the attraction is the hunt. A ritual we do when we travel is to find funky shops to search for things like this, and if we just bought it all new, what would we do when we travel? That last sentence probably makes more sense in my head than it does when you read it.

But anyway, the meadow green one is my favorite. I know this because when I looked on the shelf where we keep them, all of them were there - yellow, red, jade, poppy, and the other yellow, but not the meadow green one. And, gentle reader, I did not take the easy road and use one of the 5 perfectly good) and other than the color - identical!) mugs on the shelf, but instead rooted around in the dishwasher until I found the one I wanted.

For some reason, the meadow green one makes me happy when I drink from it.

A few years ago, I learned about glimmers. In overly simplistic language, they are the opposite of a trigger. Just as a trigger is a thing that can cause a negative psychological response, a glimmer is a thing that can cause a positive one. And for those of us who have trauma histories, searching for and recognizing them can be invigorating.

Since learning about glimmers, I am on constant alert for them. For example, when I am driving home on the interstate from a neighboring city, there is this one hill that, when you crest it, the prairie rolls out in front of you and for maybe 3 seconds, it’s all incredibly beautiful and green and all feels right in the world and inevitably, a huge grin breaks out on my face. Like rooting around in the dishwasher for my coffee mug, I will go to great lengths to come home that way - even when it makes the trip longer.

Some glimmers are unplanned, just like most triggers are. I never could have predicted that there is a bathroom in a tobacco shop in Memphis TN that smells exactly like the laundry room in my great aunt’s house did in 1979, and that for a split second I was back in the safest place I have ever felt, in a house where I knew full and unconditional love. That was a glimmer.

But the good news is that, just like how you avoid things that you know are triggers, you can arrange your life to fire glimmers at you on purpose. Like planning your morning around that meadow green coffee mug. Or rearranging your itinerary in order to crest that one hill.

Do you have any glimmers you want to share? Just hit reply - I’d love to hear about them.

Five Beautiful Things

A collection of actual footage from the Mars rover in 4k. The bigger the screen, the better for this one.

Watching people play video games is a whole genre on YouTube. This is not that, but the same vibe with a 40 year old flavor. I stared at the screen, watching PongWars, far longer than is decent to admit.

​Tragopan pheasants are large, chicken size critters from Asia that are clothed in an incredible array of colors. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Tracy Chapman made a VERY rare public appearance last night at the Grammys, and did a duet with country artist Luke Combs, who recently covered the song. On so many levels, this is amazing. (I apologize for the abruptness of the video, but the only other sharable version I could find was on the site formerly known as Twitter, and I don’t link there no more.)

​Least Action, by Kay Ryan (from this book)

Is it vision

or the lack

that brings me

back to the principle

of least action,

by which in one

branch of rabbinical

thought the world

might become the

Kingdom of Peace not

through the tumult

and destruction necessary

for a New Start but

by adjusting little parts

a little bit—turning

a cup a quarter inch

or scooting up a bench.

It imagines an

incremental resurrection,

a radiant body

puzzled out through

tinkering with the fit

of what’s available.

As though what is is

right already but

askew. It is tempting

for any person who would

like to love what she

can do.

​

Link ideas this week came from Jason Kottke, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Garreth Higgins, and Andy Baio.

The most clicked link last issue (~20% of opens) was to the artwork of Christine Nguyen.​

A moment, please, for something important

​This is an incredibly well written, completely true, and utterly depressing article about what it means to be a writer these days. My membership program is my attempt to deal with it - nobody wants me to make a TikTok, even if I had the time, skill, or talent to do that - which I do not. I am eternally grateful that because of my members, I don’t have to put things behind paywalls, run ads, or try to “build a platform”.

If this work is important to you, I encourage you to become a member. For as little as $5 a month you can make sure I have the resources to keep doing this work, and that the few hours I get to write each week are spent doing this, and not trying to spam folks for attention.

The world is an inequitable place for most folks. I could put this project behind a paywall and literally double my income from it, but that would mean the people who most need access to beauty would be kept from it. But because a few of you are willing to become members, I get to release it all here for free. That is a beautiful thing in and of itself, and I’m grateful beyond measure for it, and for you.

If you want to make sure I don’t have to make Facebook Reels in order to get read, you can learn more about being a member, or buy me a cup of coffee, or just forward this email to your friends.