When all seems lost. When it feels as if America is convulsing beyond relief.

In 1918, when James Joyce was fighting poor eyesight to bring to life an entire city, Dublin, one loving letter at a time, the world was consumed by a fourth catastrophic year of World War One.

And, Monet was creating his take-your-breath-away water lillies.

In 1918, when Joyce’s hero, Leopold Bloom, and his wife, Molly, and Molly’s lover, Blazes Boylan, and the terribly serious Stephen Dedalus, were being molded into shape by the sharp pencil in Joyce’s hand, the Spanish Flu was laying seige to countless communities.

And, Picasso was arranging shapes and colors and cubes in ways that stretched the imagination.

Today, when the remains of a U.S. Capitol police officer killed in the January 6th riots at the beacon of democracy lay in state in that same citadel, and political parties are warring and a pandemic continues to rage, somewhere a novel is being written that will change forever the way we read literature, and somewhere a painter is mixing shapes and colors and textures in a way that will chill and thrill and leave viewers awestruck long after those of us who live in these frightening, brilliant, saddening, exhilirating times, are gone.

In the end, beauty will prevail. So long as we release our demands on what beauty must look like, beauty will prevail.