On Saturday morning, at the local farmer’s market, the tables spill over with color. The cool air is scented with breakfast crepes, gyros, fresh baked bread and bowls of menudo…Small Good Things.
There are good reasons to eat organic fruits and vegetables. Primarily, the lack of pesticides, but there are also secret, unique motives that (when discovered) release the magic properties of a savory, connected life.
Small Good Things.
And when the connection is made, it seems as if it was always there waiting, the natural thing to do. A fat plum, ripened to perfection, purple as a king’s vestment, tastes like a sweet dream in the backyard of an everlasting summer. That first bite bursts with a trickle of juice from the corner of your mouth and is met by the grin of the woman standing behind the table. She tells you she knows her orchard. She knows just when to pick them. “You can’t buy them in the supermarket,” she laughs. And you smile also, but not too wide, because they are so juicy.
The farmer’s market is a place to gather your senses and expand your spirit. You can taste life.
Raymond Carver’s famous short story, “A Small Good Thing,” zeros-in on this unique secret. Carver keeps his words close, his prose so efficient that when we meet the emotion (he vitally wants to extend) we are just as delighted as that first bite of delicious fruit.
It is a sad, troublesome story about the death of a son, close to his birthday no less, but Carver knows us. He knows we long for connection. He knows we want to unite with our senses, our emotions and our faith in all that is alive. He leaves us, (in the story) spent and empty at a warm bakery, early in the darkness before dawn. Then he feeds us, fills our souls with fresh baked rolls and pads of melting butter and the soft connection of grief.
Small Good Things.
It is that way with wine also. The large wineries produce thousands of gallons fermented in huge stainless steel tanks, barely having the chance to smooth the bite of ancient zinfandel vines or thick cabernet clusters that ripen in the central valley sun. But take these same noble grapes and crush them in a small, competent wine cellar, let them ferment in open casks and age in cool oak and you will taste the vineyard, the toasted barrel and the skill of the impassioned winemaker.
Perhaps it is not simply taste or competency nor even quality that supplies the secret, unique aspects of a connected life. Maybe it is desire, emotion, patience and love that turn these things to magic, but it is worth the effort to seek out the Small Good Things.
TMD
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2 comments:
Desire, emotion, patience and love as the secret ingredients to magic... connection and producing the fruit of our hands, it's beautiful. Your words are to poetry as the growers care is to their harvest.
With much on my mind, I went on a walk. I walked quickly, thinking, quickly, thinking. Every now and again, I would somehow be reminded to stop and take a look around. When I did this, I would see a beautiful piece of glass. And then I would think about what you wrote. Today, I collected several meaningful pieces. Your story inspired me to take delight in what the universe is showing me, in its many, many forms. I forget sometimes. Thank you for that.
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