Ten-Finger Exercises

"To see the world in a grain of sand..."

I am sitting in the living room, facing the wall where there used to be no window, only an air conditioning unit fitted into a hole. Now there is a window there, twice the length of the old hole and, like it, up high, its top just a foot from the ceiling. Through it I can see the upper branches of two cedar trees in my neighbor's yard, like streamers in the wind. In the corner of the window, in the foreground, large leaves from our linden tree are flapping. The sky beyond them is blue.

It's a very pleasant view, to watch the movement in this small, well-defined area, more dramatic to me because of the contrast with the old blank wall. It's as if there is life in a place where I never knew it existed before. It makes me smile.

If the whole wall were a window, I would not see this particular part, not in this way. It would be good, even better maybe to have more windows, but it would be different. This focuses my eyes toward a specific.

Any of you who are far-sighted, literally, have you learned the trick of making your hand into a little spy glass so that, in the shower without your glasses, you can read the labels to know if it's shampoo or conditioner you're picking up? It's very handy for when you turn forty and suddenly you can't read anything without glasses. It's good for telephone numbers of course, not novels!

I don't know why it works, why the smaller aperture to look through makes the words look bigger, but it does. It's a matter of focus.

Focusing makes me think of writing, and how we carefully choose the words and gestures for our characters, picking ones that will expand the reader's mind and make a statement above and beyond what is said. "Eleanor watched the comings and goings of her world though one tiny window," I might say, implying the geography of her mind as much as of her living room. "She stood in front of her roll-top desk, deciding which of the papers in her hands belonged in which cubby-hole. Her monthly retirement benefit was apportioned just as clearly in her mind, as were her children, her friends, and their lives. Everyone and everything had its place, and she allotted her attention accordingly."

Now, I have no idea where, if anywhere, I'm going with that, other than wishing I could stay home today and play with it.

Your new word for the day: pericope. That means, for instance in scripture, one small story picked out from the rest, one coherent unit of thought found in a few verses. For those of us who like the sounds of words, it doesn't rhyme with 'periscope.' It has four syllables, with the accent on the second.

Looking for a pericope and thinking about it, playing with it, is a way to let the Bible, or any other book, speak personally to us.

What have your eyes focused on today that spoke to you?