#30: a fine mess/the world is charged with

a fine mess is a "creative art studio and supply shop" near our place. I haven't ever gone in, but I've always adored the name of the place, and I've been curious, especially since "Messy in March" appeared on the window. Now that I've visited their Web site, I'm even more intrigued.


What a huge difference a few days can make (in weather and attitude). We had a dusting of snow overnight, but all-in-all, today was a beautiful sunny day. Here are some of the highlights, first in images, then in text:

at the corner

crossing Chapman Mills

step by step

• It was garbage and recycle day. I've borrowed a page from Pollyanna: I look forward to garbage and recycle day, because then it won't come again for another week. I mean, is there anybody who likes seeing trash out by the curbside? Actually, today a lot of households displayed creativity in setting out their g&r in snowbanks. It feels good to get rid of the crap (seriously, I cleaned the litterbox yesterday); too bad the feeling is so ephemeral (a word I first learned from Mart Belden).
• Wednesday is the shortest day of my work week.
  
• I'd just missed the previous local bus at Fallowfield, so I took the next best thing, which means I enjoyed a short ride followed by a restorative 15-minute walk. The weather was mild and the sidewalk along Woodroffe was cleared--a definite bonus, because last time I walked there it wasn't cleared, and I had to walk on what should be a shoulder but isn't because everything's still under construction from the fall. I made it home today without even seeing the bus that would have dropped me off close to home. (It's a game.)
  
• My former colleague Gayle called me this afternoon. It's always fun to catch up.

As a consequence of all that glorious sunshine, the sidewalks and roads are either sloppy or slick. On my way to Shoppers this afternoon, my foot slipped and I ended up on both knees out in the middle of the street between our driveway and the neighboring one. I didn't get hurt and no vehicles were nearby, so all's well. As I was returning from Loeb, the fresh air and sunlight glinting from all angles made me almost giddy. The opening line of a poem which I studied in Professor Ronald J. "Rocky" Sanders's Victorian Literature class in the early '90s kept echoing in my head. I felt convinced its author was Gerard Manley Hopkins--but then I second-guessed myself: perhaps I was confusing Hopkins with George Meredith, another Victorian poet. But no, I consulted my Norton Anthology of Poetry, and lo and behold, it was indeed Hopkins. I can still trust my memory for some things. Anyway, I'll reproduce the sonnet, although nobody will ever adequately reproduce Rocky Sanders's voice, powerful, yet reverent, as he read it. The man definitely had a wrestler's build and gravelly tone, but there was no mistaking his love for the words.

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins