October 6: "(detail)," Small Things, Ice Cream Cake

It's important to pay attention to the small things in life because, let's face it, the chances of monumental, life-changing events occurring on a daily basis are pretty darn slim.  So, it's the walk you take with your significant other after dinner, or the math homework that you help your son with, that really means something.

Most people don't get it.  They spend their lives waiting to hit it big in the lottery or to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.  (Okay, that last one might just be me.)  Their entire existences become waiting games, and they never experience true joy.  Happiness is always out of reach.

Billy Collins focuses on the small things . . . 

(detail)

by: Billy Collins

It was getting late in the year,
the sky had been low and overcast for days,
and I was drinking tea in a glassy room
with a woman without children,
a gate through which no one had entered the world.

She was turning the pages of an expensive book
on a coffee table, even though we were drinking tea,
a book of colorful paintings—
a landscape, a portrait, a still life,
a field, a face, a pear and a knife, all turning on the table.

Men had entered there but no girl or boy
had come out, I was thinking oddly
as she stopped at a page of clouds
aloft in a pale sky, tinged with red and gold.
This one is my favorite, she said,

even though it was only a detail, a corner
of a larger painting which she had never seen.
Nor did she want to see the countryside below
or the portrayal of some myth
in order for the billowing clouds to seem complete.

This was enough, this fraction of the whole,
just as the leafy scene in the windows was enough
now that the light was growing dim,
as was she enough, perfectly by herself
in her place in the enormous mural of the world.

I didn't get a lot of shit accomplished today.  In fact, I actually took a little nap this afternoon.  It was pretty cool outside, with a brisk wind.  A perfect day to grab a pillow and lay down on the couch, which is exactly what I did.  Eventually, I did go grocery shopping and took my puppy for a long walk.  Then I led a Zoom poetry workshop.

That's a pretty typical Sunday for me.  

Now, I'm feeling pretty beat and unprepared for tomorrow.  I was going to stay up late to catch up on grading and schoolwork, but I'm pretty exhausted.  Aside from writing this blog post, I don't think I'll be doing much of anything.

But, as Collins reminds us, it's the cup of tea and the leafy scene outside the window that really impart meaning and wisdom in a day, not a phone call from the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy.

So Saint Marty will scrounge around in the freezer for some leftover ice cream cake (delight, as Ross Gay would say) and wait for that long distance call from Sweden.