Beautiful Apocalypse

I was speaking to a dear friend the other night about nothing in particular — when you’re talking to a creative person, it does not take much for a conversation to remain interesting. I enjoy talking to this peculiar person. He challenges me creatively, intellectually.

In the midst of our conversation I had dozed off to sleep and awoke to a missed text the next morning. He had texted about his bike ride home from work late the night before. He said there had been an apocalyptic beauty about it – the quiet, stillness of the city as he pedaled to his apartment.

I quickly responded by saying beautiful apocalypse sounded like an oxymoron. But, over the next 48 hours, the two words stayed with me – beautiful apocalypse. Each word the extreme form of its definition. I envisioned an apocalypse with flames, smoke, and people running through the streets in all directions. Screams. And after: stillness – the kind of stillness he was referring to that often stirs emotions of alarm or uneasiness because it’s beyond control.

Surely the two words shouldn’t be married.

But, then I decided there is beauty in stillness, or fragile things like it, because at any moment it has the ability of shattering. An argument coming from the open window above, a car motor roaring as the driver races to beat the red light, the clanking of tin as someone throws out the trash. In an instant that stillness is broken. This idea that stillness is fleeting makes it beautiful, such as the morning light that sends drops of color across a wall. The sun will shift and the colors disappear.

Also, after chaos and the aftermath of stillness, there is a period of rebirth. Such as a crumbled city after an apocalypse, so too will the city come alive again — starting with the east and moving west. People will wake, brew their coffee, honk their horns, and type on their keyboards and the stillness that enveloped it only hours before will cease.

Whether he had said it on purpose or not, my friend had been right. Apocalyptic beauty was exactly how to define such a temporary moment – one that quite possibly will never be recreated again.