Random Thoughts

There comes a point when a painting is finished…even if it isn't. Lots to work on, but it won't be another oak tree for awhile….

I was standing in the shower this morning trying to think of my earliest memory. That led me to start remembering isolated moments in time, many with no real context, that have nevertheless stayed in my mind for decades.

When I was about four, we lived on Balboa Island in Southern California. My mother and I would walk a block or two to the sea wall and the little beach on the other side. On one occasion, I rode my tricycle, got ahead of my mother and arrived at the sea wall to find that the water came all the way up to it, completely covering the little beach. My moment of shock and, yes fear, that day remain with me still.

A moment in the second grade classroom when the teacher was teaching us to write cursive letters by describing the flight of a fly above and below the lines printed on our paper. (Years later, in India, Mr Iyengar's son, Prashant was teaching Savasana, a relaxation pose, by telling us to imagine a fly walking around various parts of our body. The technique worked a lot better in learning to write than it did in learning to relax!)

Lying in the sun somewhere, doing nothing, and thinking that there was absolutely nothing that could improve upon that moment of warmth and happiness.

Walking down the sidewalk somewhere, and hearing a woman on a bicycle call out to somebody as she rode past me.

I still remember my mother imitating my pediatrician's nurse saying, whenever she answered the phone, "Sycamore 65384, Miss Fulton Speaking."

We all remember important things…births, deaths, where we were when President Kennedy was assassinated…but why is it that these seemingly random moments are still lodged in my mind, taking up much needed space, after all these years?

I suppose the context is simply, a life remembered, for what is life, really, but a lot of random moments?