Precious Plenty 3/25/09

Life always spills over the rim of every cup.

Boris Pasternak
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Hail.
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It was a very unpleasant trip to the post office today. For one thing it was cold, and it was depressing mail that I had to send, the state of my hip made it extremely painful to walk more than a hundred feet or so and the post office is a long distance from my home. This town has almost no pedestrian benches and none en route. So by the time I got back here I was exhausted, in pain and in a very bad mood. I wanted to have a bite to eat and take a nap.

But I saw what appeared to be a white spot on the floor. I thought I had spilled some milk or flour or something. The last thing I wanted to do was to clean up a dirty spot . But I got a sponge and some water and sat down to clean it. Then I discovered that it wasn't a spot of dirt but a spot of sunlight. I sat looking at it and admired this one patch of sunlight smiling up at me. I thought how amazing it was that the sun will find it's way through all the nooks and crannies of the world to shine it's light, how every available spot on earth gets its share of sunlight, some more, some less, even if it's only for one day and a few minutes.

Then I thought about how it's the same with ideas. Wherever they may come from, we all get our share of ideas, some more, some less. The problem is that we so often ignore them, we don't take note of them, we don't take the trouble to think about them, to observe them.

In Anton Chekhov's play "The Seagull" the character of Trigorin, a writer, tells how he always carries a piece of paper in his pocket in order to jot down descriptions and ideas. Picasso used to make drawings on paper restaurant napkins and hotel stationary. I once saw a TV interview with Harold Arlen, the composer of the songs in "The Wizard Of Oz" who took a piece of music paper out of his jacket pocket to show that he always carried it with him in case he got the idea for a melody.
Then I remembered that I do the same thing myself. I always have a small note pad in my pocket to write down ideas I get from reading or thinking. I have a box full of those note pads. Some of the entries are excellent, some good, some not so good, some dreadful. Some of the good ones (I hope) make it onto my journal, Vagabond Jottings.

All these memories and realizations came to me because instead of lazily falling into bed for a well needed nap I decided first to clean up a spot.on the floor. Later, when I woke from my nap, the sun had moved on and the spot was gone. But the journey had been successful.

There's a hymn that reads:
The useful and the great,
The thing that never dies,
The silent toil that is not lost, -
Set these before thine eyes.

DB The Vagabond
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I don't care what the "meteorologist" says, It's spring.
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