As I try to describe my Grandmother's candy dish today, the best I can do is to say that it is a silver-plated, pedestal dish about four inches high. Try as I do, I cannot capture in words ~ not even in thought ~ at this point in time, my first stunned reaction when my brother held it up as we were emptying my mother's cupboards. After how many years, I knew that dish was Grandma's.
I can try to describe my astonishment, my delight at the discovery but looking at the tarnished item now, those initial, fresh thoughts are gone. If I had penetrated my thoughts at the time, perhaps I could have remembered the connection of that dish with my Grandmother. Did she reach down to me and offer me colourful, tinsel-wrapped candies? Did I envy it sitting out-of-reach?
Natalie Goldberg, American writer, talks about first thoughts having "tremendous energy. It is the way the mind first flashes on something," she writes. "The internal censor usually squelches them so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, thoughts on thought, twice and three times removed from the direct connection of the first fresh flash."
Today, it is an old dish ~ not particularly attractive ~ that holds intrigue for me but fails to excite.
Tomorrow: Writing from First Th0ughts
Sunday, January 10, 2010
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