Re: Burning Pain

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@hotpop.com)
Sat, 06 Nov 1999 20:47:48 +1100

Jim wrote:
> >  Wisdom, wisdom...it means not being jaded.  Jaded is what you get from

> >  foolishness.

The other day I was walking down the same tunnel I have walked down for
nearly four years now, just about every day, where lots of buskers play.
There have been two gypsies playing down there quite often, a woman and a
man - the man plays accordion, the woman sings. I was just walking past
them, not thinking about anything much, when I noticed another woman
watching them play. She was walking a little slower as she passed them. It
struck me like a ton of bricks, as all obvious things do, that she was
smiling. She was smiling simply because they made her happy. It's bizarre
and sickening that that should be a surprising thing, but it reaffirmed in
me something I had neglected in my own writings for so long - to be a
writer, you *must* love humanitiy. I must love and miss every face I pass
on the street. And I must admit to myself that I enjoy the buskers that I
pass. Sometimes the hardest things to find are the things so close to your
face that they blur before your eyes.

No wonder Wordsworth said (and I'm sure JDS might back him up): `Genius is
childhood rediscovered at will.'

Camille
verona_beach@hotpop.com