finding magic in the mundane
or an ode to the city of emeralds
A few years ago, I was on a trip (my documentary A Brief History of Time Travel was doing a festival run in Europe) when I had a one-night pit stop in Iceland. It had always been a dream of mine to see the northern lights. It was a little risky- there was no guarantee they’d appear at that time of year.
I stayed at a tiny little inn near the airport. It was completely empty except for the hotel manager who was a guy about my age. He told me he was training to be a pilot—there weren’t many job opportunities beyond tourism in the area.
“Let me guess, you’re either here to visit the hot springs or see the northern lights,” he asked.
“Northern lights. I really wanted to go to the hot springs too but I don’t have enough time.”
“Oh, you don’t want to go to the hot springs.”
“Why not?”
“There’s too many people that go there and it’s gross. Last time I went I stepped on something funny and pulled up chunks of hair from the mud.”
Disgusting!
“What about the northern lights?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Eh, it’s whatever. I grew up here. I see them all the time—it’s not that interesting to me, you know?”
I think about that conversation all the time. How strange and sad it is that we can live somewhere breathtakingly beautiful, but when we see it every day, it becomes ordinary.
Awe often seems reserved for things that are far away. That’s why we travel, right? That’s why people want to go see the great pyramids in Egypt, the mysterious ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the fjords of Norway.
We seek out grand landscapes, expecting them to overwhelm us. But the reality is, after a few minutes, we often feel deflated. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people describe their visit to the Grand Canyon the same way: it’s breathtaking, then suddenly, it feels quite ordinary. After all, you’ve seen countless photos of it online. You take a selfie, post it on social media, and move on. It’s just another place you can check off a list.
Anyway, the inspiration for this post comes from the fact that I’ve been busy the past few weeks finishing up a draft of a feature screenplay set in Seattle. Writing about this city—its quirks, its contradictions, the way my characters talk about what they love and hate about it—has made me reflect on how much my own feelings about Seattle have changed.
When I first moved here at ten years old, I absolutely hated it. I was coming from Arizona—hot, dry, and sunny… it was like living in an endless summer where I spent all my time at pool parties and wandering through sprawling, marble-floored and air conditioned malls.
Seattle, by contrast, was rainy and gray and wet and cold. The first night I arrived is seared into my mind: how dark it was, how you could barely see a few feet in front of you in the car despite the windshield wipers working overtime because it was pouring so hard, how I was utterly convinced that Big Foot was going to jump out at any moment!
Growing up, Seattle felt sad and depressing. There were no pool parties and most importantly, the only mall in the area, Bellevue Square (which has now undergone a major upgrade) was a tiny, sad little brown brick box.
But then autumn rolled in—my first real autumn. I remember picking up leaves, marveling at their bright yellow, orange, and red hues. I had only ever seen autumn in movies and on TV. Back in Arizona, there were only two seasons: summer (where it was so scorching hot that you could fry an egg on the sidewalk) and winter (where it was time to wear sweaters and jackets). I hoarded best ones and brought them back home with me, like souvenirs.
It wasn’t until I moved back after college and a stint on the East Coast that I truly began to appreciate the city. I found myself missing home—the trees, the lakes, the strange little quirks of Seattle that I had once resented.
Now, I rave about Seattle all the time. People ask if I’d ever move, and honestly? I don’t think I could. I might leave for stretches here and there, but this will always be my home.
I love that Seattle is beautiful and funny and strange and weird, full of surprises and inspiration. I love that it’s a melting pot, especially with the influx of transplants from other countries mixing in with locals. I love that we’re a tech hub with a strong entrepreneurial spirit.
I love that in twenty minutes, you can be deep in the wilderness, surrounded by forests and mountains and trails. I love that we’re a city of fans—of people who really care about their hobbies, their teams, their weird little niches. I love the gray, misty days that make you want to stay in and write. I love the long, endless summer days in August. I love that we’re surrounded by water—the lakes and the Sound—and how every neighborhood has its own flavor and history. I love the friendships I’ve built here.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s that happiness can be hard to find, especially as you get older. Life piles on— routine, responsibilities, uncertainty… especially now with what’s going on in the world: the dismantling of our democratic system and a recession that’s already hit despite all the news sources claiming we aren’t in in one yet (NYT has a fun article about this: Is Spring Break in Houston a #RecessionIndicator?) I feel like I’ve been living with this constant hum of anxiety like white noise in the background. It’s so easy to get swallowed up in it.
Still happiness finds its way in. It comes in precious, fleeting moments— your mom’s infectious laugh after you tell a joke, when your roommate brings home flowers, the satisfaction that follows working hard on a project.
Lately, I’ve found that one of the keys to feeling more grounded, more in tune with myself, and ultimately, feeling a little happier, is learning to find beauty and wonder in the things I see every day.
Like noticing how rain beads on a spider web. The way a tree bows at a really lovely angle. A hummingbird hovering just outside your window. The smell of the ground after it rains. And being here in the Seattle, it isn’t hard to find these moments if you’re paying attention.
It’s about being present. If you’re into meditation, you’ve probably heard this before—mindfulness is all about observing your thoughts and feelings, then letting them go. Observing without judgment (which, honestly, I’ve always found really hard).
But I’ve started to think the real trick isn’t in mastering your thoughts—it’s in noticing the world around you.
It’s about finding magic in the mundane.
During undergrad, I interned on a documentary about Manhattan Plaza—an affordable housing complex on 43rd Street in New York. Originally built as luxury housing, it was converted in the 1970s into federally subsidized housing for performing artists and low-income residents. Over the years, it became home to actors, musicians, and creatives—people like Samuel L. Jackson and Alicia Keys passed through its halls.
What struck me most wasn’t just the talent it nurtured, but the care put into the environment. The buildings was managed an Episcopal priest, Rev. Rodney Kirk, who had no prior experience to building management and had absolutely no idea what he was doing, who played classical music in the hallways, placed fresh flowers in the lobby, and made sure the entrances were always clean, who according to the residents, was what set Manhattan Plaza apart. That sense of dignity and intention trickled down. Residents respected the space because it was clear someone else did, too.
I think about that place a lot, especially now living in Seattle, where the drug and homelessness crisis is impossible to ignore and is The Big Issue that everyone talks about. It dominates local elections, online debates, the daily news coverage… Seattle is often at the center of the national narrative about West Coast cities in decline.
But what’s heartbreaking is how close to home it hits. I used to go to Lam’s all the time, which is spotlighted in this IG post. Small business owners are struggling to stay open. One told me he has to wash urine off his storefront every morning. Can you imagine having to start every day like that? How exhausting, how demoralizing that can be? And he’s not alone.
When no one cares for a space, when no one takes the time to make it beautiful, it falls into disrepair. Trash piles up, graffiti goes unchecked, everything feels neglected—and the more neglected it feels, the less people care.
You can feel it walking around the city now and it’s hard not to internalize that. It’s hard to feel pride or connection to a place that doesn’t seem to love itself.
If you scroll through Seattle subreddits, and the city gets dragged constantly—half-jokingly, half not. But in between these posts about homelessness, drugs, politics, you’ll find people posting moments like this:
Seattle is still beautiful. But it needs people to notice. It needs people to care. Because care is contagious—just like neglect.
In 1757, Edmund Burke—an Irish philosopher, writer, and politician— published his treaty A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which would become a foundational philosophy for the Romantics.
Burke believed our emotions, or what he called “passions”, shaped our ideas of the world around us and our actions. And out of all of those emotions, he concluded that the sublime, or awe, was the strongest. As Burke put it, “Awe is an astonishment with a kind of horror, a sort of tranquility tinged with terror.”
He talks about how big, overwhelming things- lightening, vastness of the universe, towering mountain- can conjure the sublime. They remind us how brief our lives are at the mercy of nature, how tiny we are compared to the scale of the universe. It’s that feeling you get when you’re standing at the edge of something massive and for a moment, you remember how small you really are.
But Burke didn’t think the sublime was only found in nature. He believed you could also access it through poetry, music, or writing—anything that felt larger than life.
That’s part of why Gothic literature took off around the same time: it mixed beauty with terror, wonder with fear. It made people feel something.
I think people are still trying to chase that feeling today- but the way we go about it has changed. The awe and vastness of visiting the Grand Canyon or the Northern Lights, just isn’t enough anymore. We jump out of planes, take psychedelics in search of spiritual highs, or doomscroll endlessly through catastrophe and spectacle (re: the IG account I referenced earlier, @seattle.looks.like.shxt), hoping something might break through the numbness. It’s like we’ve confused scale with depth—as if awe has to be extreme or cinematic to mean anything.
But I want to argue the opposite: maybe the sublime can be found in small things, too.
I keep going back to that moment when I was ten, standing in a pile of leaves, overwhelmed by their color. When I think of a happy moment in my life, this is always a memory I come to. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that day, I was feeling awe.
Maybe it’s not about going bigger—it’s about looking closer, and noticing what’s already there.
I want to leave you with a scene from American Beauty (1999), Dir. Sam Mendes, screenplay by Alan Ball, which I think encapsulates everything that I’ve been talking about.
In it, Ricky, the introspective, slightly strange boy next door neighbor, shows Jane, the teenage daughter of the main character, a video he filmed of a plastic bag drifting in the wind. He calls it “the most beautiful thing” he’s ever filmed.
Hope you find a little magic in the mundane today! Thanks for reading as always.
x Gisella
what i’m consuming 🍰
This was probably the best video essay I’ve listened to/watched in a while. I don’t know if you (like me!) have been getting ads on Youtube for Hallow, a religious meditation app backed by Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance, featuring celebs like Mark Wahlberg, and Chris Pratt, and… Gwen Stefani?! I was shocked!
Growing up, I used to love listening to No Doubt. During Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku era, I remember feeling uneasy about her four silent Japanese backup dancers—Love, Angel, Music, and Baby—but I couldn’t articulate why. As a mixed-race kid growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood, I hadn’t yet unpacked how deeply problematic it was. Beyond her appearances on The Voice and her marriage to Blake Shelton, I hadn’t thought much about her. However, this video essay offers a fascinating reevaluation of her cultural influence.
who i am
Hi, I’m Gisella! I’m a repped screenwriter based in Seattle. I directed a feature-length documentary and most recently, my pilot Body Brokers was on the 2024 Blacklist Latine List. Follow me on my journey to get my first screenplay green lit 💚
I’m trying to be more present in the moment these days and not so lost in the whirlwind of consuming content and just thinking about the next thing, this made me stop and think for a little bit. It’s good to slow down, there’s so much beauty in the mundane and magic to live and experience this world.