Cottagecore and the Longing for Beauty

On a cold January day, the clouds hung like a thick curtain on the sun while driving through a park in the city center. The lanes were not full of people, so I had a clear vision of the bare shores on both sides of the road. Instead of the usual weeds of weeds that drown the grass in the summer, all I could see was a white glaze. If I had known it, I would have thought that I snowed without me knowing it, and somehow the dust had mysteriously covered the banks next to the road, leaving the pavement intact.

After another look, he thought, I realized that what I saw was not snow, but instead, a lot of garbage: grated pieces of fast food boxes, napkins and non -identifiable material that drivers must have thrown from their cars.

The repulsion rose in me, but also sadness and anger. When did the city’s covered and natural areas of the city become our garbage boat? The world seemed very ugly at that time, and I could not help yearning the most beautiful views than the streets with litera before me.

Instantly I understood why so many are attracted to the aesthetics of the Internet, and specifically with their beauty of wild flowers, Frog and toad Paint and nostalgic appeal to the past. The more pleasant it would be if, instead of riding, I ride the park’s t -shirts, I could walk on the screen of my computer and sit near a meadow in the calm of nature. Or travel along the roads of the forest in paintings, without haste and without mails by horns at full volume and accelerators. What a refreshing change would be to live in a world of a storybook that resembles Anne or Green Gables ORPÍN The secret garden. Life would seem much better and more beautiful.

I discovered Cottagecore, which grew in popularity of the pandemic, YouTube while looking for instrumental musical videos to listen while I studied or wrote. These videos showed images of rural landscapes or paintings like Edwin Harris’ A quiet moment Combined with soft piano and classical music. Approximately in time, the algorithm took me below the path of Cottagecore and introduced me to Paola Merrill. His channel, The Cottage Fairy, has millions of followers and has allowed him to publish a book entitled The Cottage Fairy Companion: a cottagecore guide for slow life, connect with nature and love again again.

If you are looking for charm, then the Merrill channel is a good place to start. His art is shown in the way in which he captures broad landscapes, as well as the close details of his daily life and his handmade art. The videos are as calm and relaxing as a cup of chamomile tea on a cold day, with Paola’s voice in silence sharing thoughts about art and life. Seeing your treats to bake, paint, artisanal paper flashlights and discuss your favorite books, I am repeatedly surprised by your emphasis on the slowest and most sustainable life. This can be said of many in the movement of the cabin, since enthusiasts are invited to calm their occupied lives and notice the beauty that surrounds them.

For some people, aesthetics is just that, a preference for decoration or simply a dress style. However, for others such as Merrill, it rebukes a deeper philosophy that only creates a house with cabin themes or putting vintage dresses and lace ribbons. Getting with cottagecore is an emphasis on the slowest life, taking the time to rest and shut up, notice small but significant details in life and enjoy nature. As Merrill declared in an interview for Mango’s publication: “I don’t think it is the field we really want, only the feeling that evokes, although a feeling of peace and tranquility that allows us to get out of stress and [busyness] or our daily life. “

Of course, despite all its charm, there are opponents of aesthetics. Critics argue that Cottagecore fans are living an escapist fantasy of an idealized moment. As an article entitled “Cottagecore, a beautiful aesthetics with problems to address” Michigan’s diary reflective points:

Whether or not, the romantic trend that comes with unique difficulties, unimagalble for cottagecore fans born and raised in urban and suburban areas. Cottagecore chooses not to recognize rural poverty and lack of resources, together with heavy work involved in maintaining a farm.

Life in a rural cabin, both in the past and in the present, often implies difficulties and poverty, aspects especially absent in the images and videos of Cottagecore enthusiasts. Ignoring the realities and hard boats of life in rural and impoverished areas is not something we should encourage. Nor should we forget that there is a difference between reality and what we see on the Internet. Cottagecore and other aesthetics (EC, Fairycore, Grandmacore, Light Academy) are based on highly polished images and a deliberate presentation of selected images to the spectators. In many ways, is A fantasy world in which spectators can enter to find relief from life struggles. Such escapism is not always bad, but sometimes it can be out of place and not healthy.

Does that mean that Cottagecore has no value to society? No, by underlying its ornaments and fantasies it is an innate human desire for beauty and peace that returns to Eden and everything we lost due to the fall. This year it is within all people, which for many intensified by the pandemic and continues to be fed by today’s rapid world consumed by deadlines and technology. They did not live behind the screens or always fight anxiously after the next task. Cottagecore invites us to pause and notice Beauty in the ordinary; to Experience and care of the natural worldnot as dominators but as butlers; and know what Our lives as unique human beings are important. Among the lace arches, the attire inspired by folklore and the branches of wild flowers can be found traces of a milk that expects to be fulfilled.

A day is coming when we will live in a land full of beauty. There will no longer be obstructed streets with garbage, paved and the tragic loss of habitats and species. Humans will live in harmony between them and the natural world in a new sky and a new land that are much better than Eden. God will eliminate the tears of our, and sadness, brokenness and loneliness will no longer seek our days (Apocalypse 21: 3-4). What we think could only be a fantasy will become a reality.

However, that does not mean that we have to retire to our screens while we wait. Just as we expect that day, we can give life to fragments of that hope and lunar to life. I have already seen glimpses of that, right beyond the screen. In the same city where there were roads full of garbage, I have seen picturesque welcome signs that splash the grass of an apartment complex, standing despite the covered grass and graffiti in the fence. I have seen a house in a summary section of the city proudly adorned with bursts of a garden. There are numerous reasons why these are what they are, including the political and social problems that must be addressed. Those small cases of beauty, thought, have a place to challenge the evil of injustice around them offering a curative vision of hope.

We can be part of that redeeming work when we work to beautify our spaces and those of our neighbors, and live more intentionally and slowly to recognize the value of all human life. But such work requires that our lives are more than an internet aesthetic. What is needed is an incarnational approach in which we testify the goodness and beauty of the Creator and El Salvador. His salvation plan was not a thought of illusion. Rather, he taught in the human bottle and entered our breakup to bring healing.

For me, this means refusing to retire to the fantasy of images and videos as if there was no beauty potential in my own corner of the world. Because beauty is already present there, in the midst of the disorder and the rupture of the life of the city center. I just need to be willing to see what my world is as well as what Could be. In other words, not only longed for beautiful embankments along the streets of Parkway, but also to make them come true to my community and clean the trash along their parks and roads. Cultivate a space that shows that the break does not have the last word. That there is, in fact, a better world, an eternal cultivated by the hands of which it always carries the scars that our healing bought.

One day, perhaps, someone will clean that white garbage glaze along the road and the groups of margaritas or lilies plants. And oh, how much the beauty of that area will be due to its transformation of the decomposition to a new life.