Monday, June 15, 2009

What we (almost) learned from watching Felix The Cat cartoons...

I was at the train station today and ran into the daughter of a friend and I said hi and complimented her on her back pack which was a very interesting old fashioned style that you do not see too often. She said it was her "possibilities bag".  Upon inquiry she explained that when she was camping in Wyoming she learned that every day she needed to pack for possibilities (e.g., rain, thirst, sun, hunger, getting lost, bugs) so now, whatever the environment (rural/urban), she tries to pack for what could happen. I try to do that in my head - be ready for possibility and I pack my brain with the things I may need, flexibility, some humor, curiosity -  all the stuff I can think of that might be needed at any given moment. Sometimes I am well provisioned, other times I totally left the bag at home. 

Shortly after running into her (the daughter of my friend) I ran into a guy I know in front of his workshop/office/studio and I said hi to him (the guy I know)  and went into his office/studio/workshop for like only the second time ever and realized (for the first time) that it is almost a museum. The guy has been collecting stuff for 40 years. He had a deer head AND a tiger head, a deer skin rug, at least 10 old radios from the  50's, an orange art deco couch, cabinets filled with glass, chairs, tables, art work, old hand tools, movie posters, pinball machines, old photos, comic books, move projectors... and I happened to see covered in rugs and books and other stuff two old green chairs that, incredibly enough, are exactly a match to the old green chairs that I have in my kitchen that we bought 20 years ago and are now falling apart. Only his are nicer - mint condition. He happily sold them to me or $25 each.

Fortuity met Possibility...

1 comment:

  1. i use to have a bag like that. umbrella, a sweater just in case, some safety flats if i did not like the shoes i was wearing, you name it i had it. But i learned that sometimes that bag needs to not exist because at times its when you are unprepared when you learn the most. and also i couldn't keep planing for disasters that might never happen. I was worrying myself sick over nothing at all. no way to live.

    I like your version though packing your mind instead of a bag.
    the mind is much more resilient.

    ReplyDelete

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