During our visit to New York, which happened just before the violence in Paris, we went from backyard Edens to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We walked for several hours in a light drizzle of rain through the Japanese hill and pond garden which, that day, displayed an installation of Isamu Noguchi sculptures. Each sculpture grew out of the landscape, organically arising, and surprising. Often there were benches near a sculpture so that we could sit and contemplate the sculpted landscape and the sculpture of the artist, mingling seamlessly in the damp misty day. A rainy day is beautiful way to wander through this garden, with its designs based on principles like impermanence, and interdependent co-arising, sharp edges that led into water, light into darkness and back again. Even the way the red leaves fell from maple trees emphasized the fleeting beauty. Falling rain marked the complicated lines of bark on trees, running slowly down to puddles and pools. There were few people besides ourselves. We went slowly. Later that day we learned of the terrorist attacks in France. The silver light in the wet garden helped to hold the grief of the day, the shapes of beauty helped to hold the sorrow, rain fell, tears fell, so much beauty and tragedy joined in silent tension.

http://www.bbg.org/visit/event/isamu_noguchi_at_brooklyn_botanic_garden