1. That planet is a speck.
2. That speck is the same size as Earth.
3. That means, as my daughter used to say, “I am so yittle.”
4. When you’re yittle, you can see big.
5. That yittle speck made me see the bigger picture.
6. The incomparably brilliant and blazing omnipotence of the sun.
7. The sun, the sun, the sun!
8. Venus takes 105 years.
9. The sun comes around every day.
10. Every day is a spectacle beyond comprehension.
11. Totally new and without repetition.
12. With no hurry, no fanfare, no wait.
13. Attracting no one’s attention.
Except, perhaps—and this is the real teaching—yours.
A student comes to a teacher and asks, “What is the way?” You might wonder this yourself from time to time. What do I do? Where do I go? Is it this way or that? What next? What if? Did I miss the turn? If you don’t see the way, you don’t see it even as you walk on it.
Somewhere in the deep trench of what I call my “first life,” a friend gave me the book, A Year in Provence. The happy misadventures of an English novelist and his wife in the French countryside was a megaseller. It went on to spawn a TV miniseries, several sequels and the undying flattery of imitators—an entire genre of nonfiction pretenders that persists to this day. You know, books like A Year of Doing This, A Year of Doing That. They appeal to us because we all want to ditch our lives and end up somewhere other than a ditch. Makes for pleasant tripping, if only in our dreams.
friend: no one you know
I drank two Dr. Peppers last week. I just might have another before today is through. When I reach for one on the lower shelf of the refrigerator case of Happy’s corner convenience store, I think of my mother. My mother drank Dr. Pepper. It’s one of the things I couldn’t stand about her, so when I do it now, it’s the atonement of a fully grown daughter. It tastes pretty damn good.
Speaking only for myself, of course.
