On Beauty, 3 Cities and the Beauty of 3 Cities

Recommended song for reading: A Day in the Life by Wes Montgomery

Last Sunday, I had the chance to spend time half-drunk under a full moon, with someone who was easily one of the most beautiful human beings I have ever laid eyes on. Not just because of his physical beauty, but because he had a flair that was so captivating to watch—a grace he carried in the way he moved when something interested him, how he would start playing with his rings when his attention wandered, the spark in his eyes, and the lines that appeared on the right side of his lips when he found something funny.

You might wonder why I’m telling you all this. It’s because neither you nor I encounter such beauty on a daily basis, and while the extraordinary is striking, finding beauty in the ordinary is comforting, and it is that comfort I seek in my daily life.

As our conversation unfolded and we started to talk about the cities I lived in, he asked me—since he visited Istanbul last year—why I consider it a beautiful city. I gave a sentimental answer, explaining how I grew up there and that the city is full of memories. But I couldn’t quite explain any further, and it made me reflect: Istanbul isn’t conventionally beautiful. Sure, there are parts of the city that feel timeless, but it’s also chaotic. People are always on edge, which is understandable given the political and economic situation, the traffic is awful, and there are certain realities we avoid confronting daily. But Istanbul taught me to see beauty in the ordinary, and as I said before, the ability to find beauty in the ordinary is comforting.

This ability has also made me stronger, allowing me to make any city, place or person feel like home with a certain comfort. I treat everything with meticulous attention to find its beauty. Some might say this is romanticizing life, but I’m talking about accepting reality while choosing to control how I perceive it. That was the standpoint I held while living in Munich. I didn’t particularly like the city, nor did I find it visually interesting, but I loved the personal "beauty" it offered me: the flower shop that calls me when my favorite flowers arrive, going to Marks at the same time every day and finding my cappuccino ready as I walk in, being in Sonya’s presence, inviting friends to my garden to relax and listen to each other, buying burekas from my favorite deli, where I’m so happy to see women doing what they love, hosting dinner parties, regularly attending the opera, being just a train ride away from all my friends, and most importantly, knowing where and how to pay my taxes (being—or at least trying to be—an adult, as mundane as it sounds, excites me).

This practice also applies to my life in Rome. Yet, the situation is different here because Rome is where significant moments in my life have always taken place since I first visited (I’ve visited 18 times). Rome has always given me the opportunity to experiment and experience things I hadn’t before. Yet, now that I live here, I’m not constantly exposed to the dreamy side of Rome. 

But Rome still is a dream—Rome has given me the space to shape my daily life, which I treat like my “temple and religion.” The difference between Rome and Istanbul or Munich is that Rome’s beauty is not only comforting but also striking by nature.

My daily life here is where I thrive: I love the coffee I get in the mornings, singing out loud as I walk to the office, shouting good morning in every language I know when I arrive, how my boss laughs and says my colleague’s name, the naive and hopeful eyes of that same colleague, how another colleague treats me with so much care and affection, and the beauty mark on another’s face. I love going home by train and watching people. This is probably what I love most about Rome: Romans are very expressive, and their features are so full of meaning. It’s easy to tell who is patient, worried, angry, or happy. Some have such deep lines on their faces from their “favorite” expressions that they seem like paintings in need of exploration. Sometimes, I can’t help but stare.

I also tend to try to document the beauty I am exposed to, both the comforting and the striking, on a daily basis. Sometimes by taking pictures, sometimes by writing and sometimes actually complimenting the beauty out loud to affirm the reality of what I see. “All these forms of communicating beauty is, first, an affirmation of the visible which I surround myself with and which continually appears and disappears. Without the disappearing, there would perhaps be no impulse to capture the moment, for then the visible itself would possess the surety (the permanence) which I strike to find. "

This documenting is done without aesthetically concerns, as in terms of Hegel and not in terms of the internet jargon. I document what I see without trying to make it look like something it is not, I am just trying to document the way I percieve.

I hope to continue discovering beauty and documenting it throughout my life, always finding joy in the process.