Allow yourself the luxury of thinking...
I've just made that title up!
As chums here know, issues are desolate with not seeing and hearing my darling wife here any more. I can cope in various ways, including, most importantly, with chatting with Elder Daughter, (who used to be ED in past posts), and a laugh and a recipe for tomorrow's lunch is the norm)!
But things move on! I make things, design improbable artifacts, buy less food, walk Lily with a vengeance, and she is an adorable dog, with a loyalty span the size of the Russian states!
But while tinctures are quite an interesting issue here, the norm never exceeds the necessity, and during those minutes, 'thinking' sets in...!
I can redesign the whole house, consider a new car, wonder about a new electric bike, forget a new electric bike, and ponder how I can create something from some oak off-cuts which lurk in a chum's garage just down the road, etc., etc.,
Salvador Dali once said that he could have a few tilts at the old Cava, sit in a comfortable chair, holding a huge brass key in one hand, and drift off to sleep.
Just as he was relaxing into the arms of alcoholic oblivion, his hand would relax, he'd drop the key with a clang, wake up, and immediately start sketching, while the myriad of impossible visions swirled around his fertile brain, and his pictures would emerge!
So the Telegraph Crossword supplies the extra brain exertion, Sudoku helps the other side, planning next year's garden is in its infancy, but the ideas are already in place, and I've just done something I thought I'd never do! I've arranged for a gardener to come and give our hedges a very severe haircut, such that I can control them for the next dozen years or so, and about £300.00 will be a satisfactory expenditure, as I've thought long and hard, and now realise I can't do them on my own anymore!
So that's what thinking does for you...
4 comments:
(Belatedly, very sorry to hear of your loss; I didn’t like to bring it up last time I visited but am mentioning it now as you have done so. Nothing fixes the hole in the world, but I hope you find it increasingly easier to walk around its perimeter.)
You’ve hit on something of which I think people often need to be reminded. some years ago, fed up with pupils rushing into every task they were set, I started setting up an egg-timer for a variable period of silent reflection before they put pen to paper.
It proved surprisingly effective for most; in fact, several colleagues adopted the idea and I even had parents ask where they could get a similar set of timers to replicate the practice at home - including for themselves.
I hope you are hanging onto the plans you sketch; I’m a great believer that putting something in permanent visual form pays off further down the line. (I’m not sure I’d like Dali’s method, though; it sounds like the recipe for a giant and long-lasting headache.)
Reading old detective stories by a window is relaxing, encourages a chap to pause for a moment, gaze through the window and wonder if the vicar was the murderer in spite of all the red herrings. I'm thinking of novels of the Poirot, Miss Marple vintage.
Some of the less well-known authors aren't great writers, but they can weave puzzles which keep the attention and they aren't politically correct.
Thank you MacH - your first paragraph is a thoughtful and very pleasing analogy of the state here - I'm nearly able to do just that...
But your egg-timer subject is pure genius, and should really be bottled for years ahead! My version only applies to serious subjects which I have to consign to paper - or email etc. Simply put, I sleep on it! And the following morning, the comment can be erased or committed, as one's brain foretells during the night!
I guess that a classroom period of 45 minutes may not be much time to do the thinking, but even five minutes is a valuable time to collect one's thoughts before writing them down!
The plans here are being well-held, and even this morning, I restarted a project I began three years ago, which is scanning and saving every photo we've ever taken! Nobody will want smelly old albums from 1979, so I'll 'chip' the lot and they'll all go on a tiny stick for a PC!
Now that is a very sound notiton, AK!
I find that if the author of such a story is able to put you in that frame of mind at the very start, the story becomes an obsession, and the skills of a writer to inject a twist at the end must be classed as the best text one can achieve!
I have a box set of Miss Marple, with Joan Hickson in charge, and as they're quite long, one really does need a few moments reflection at a few - a lot of - scenes, so that series is now coming off the shelf!
Sound comment of yours - thank you!
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