Thursday

It is already Thursday! There is much to be done. Things to do– lists, yes there are multiples of them in a futile attempt to arrive at the best possible way to do everything in the least possible time. Prioritise. How can one do that? Wont it mean placing greater value on

one thing over the others? But they are all things that need doing, and each on completion will lead to a certain sense of fulfillment and other things to do. The choice isn’t simply between vanilla and strawberry. Though you may argue even that isn’t so simple sometimes.

Then there is the rain. It has been raining continuously for two days. How can one do anything but watch it rain? A river flows beneath the parked cars. Wouldn’t one like to find out where it goes? Shouldn’t that be on one of the lists? The sparrows are settling down in the balcony. There is much to “chee chee” about before they are all comfortable; organized according to their pecking order. Then silent and still they will watch the worst of the rain pass by. Time to pick
up the camera. But for the light.

And then while sorting through all these sensory impulses one looks back at the screen and there is Patti Smith reading from The Waves by Virginia Woolf. After replaying it three times one goes on to hear Dancing Barefoot because that’s how the mind works. Then the book Street Haunting is picked up and after reading a few lines from the first essay one starts to recollect the gulls swirling around the dome of St Peter’s at 10:30 at night. Such poetry. And one instantly whispers, “Send a philosopher to London; please God no poet!”*

A truck carrying construction waste blows its horn. Somewhere a house of cards collapses. Is this the butterfly effect?

Coming back to the desk and everything else it encapsulates one catches sight of the work to be done. And the lists. Multiples of them. Ah! But it is only Thursday.

*Heinrich Heine. More about this soon.
You can watch Patti Smith's performance here.
Or read Street Haunting– the complete essay here. Go on try it. It's only Thursday.