Piles of Treasure

"What happened was, I got the idea in my head--and I could not get it out--that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping--and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge--when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake, anyway--is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly."

-Franny from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey

Walking home in the rain, cold, jeans soaking wet up to my knees and dragging in the sidewalk puddles. The depressing stagnant grey of a November evening in the Northen Hemisphere. The days only get shorter from here.

Why, is it, then, that they seem to stretch on forever? And leave a smile on my face? Mixed with the smell of dead leaves, gasoline and dirty sidewalks is the calming, homey scent of wood-burning stoves. Everywhere.

This is the smell of my new home. I walk, enchanted by these olfactory delights and I smile. I smile because I'm able to walk, two days after spraining my ankle. (Yes, again). I smile because I feel like, after not so many years of practicing, I am learning what it means to accept what's been given. I smile because it would be a great waste of my energy to hate this weather - I can't do any thing about it, so I might as well enjoy it.

I often find myself writing out lists of all the degrees I'm going to attain, the stamps on my passport that I'll collect, the languages learned, the instruments mastered, all the while glazing over that which is right in front of me. Tangible or not, I crave to build these piles of treasure, distracting me from the experience, happy or painful, of life.

Dripping wet, I changed into my rain coat and wellies and went tromping around in the rain. No matter how old I get the ability to walk straight through puddles without getting wet will always fascinate, amaze and entertain me, to no end. Rain boots woot!

Happiness, by A. A. Milne

John had

Great Big

Waterproof

Boots on;

John had a 

Great Big

Waterproof

Hat;

John had a 

Great Big

Waterproof

Mackintosh - 

And that

(Said John)

Is

That.

(Mackintosh: noun Brit. a full-length waterproof coat. ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: named after Charles Macintosh (1766-1843), the Scottish inventor who originally patented the cloth.)