"That got me thinking…"

There is this rather ordinary window, with a gauzy white curtain that billows. The window pane, painted white decades ago, overlooks a street corner; the brick walls of the gas station poke into view and remind me of my hometown. Occasionally a sedan drives by, an older man on his way for a lotto ticket, or perhaps a minivan, mother distracted by sippy cups and endless questions. But what I see is the ripple.

Do you see it? The shadow of the window pane…it’s rippled. The pane is straight, but the curtain isn’t. It bends and folds and moves. Light shines onto a straight board and that straight board makes a shadow on the curtain. And somehow that shadow is rippled, like a giant ribbon on a gift, just waiting to be opened.

Real life is “out there” happening – old men play the lotto and young moms drive distracted. The things that happen to me, they are what they are, things that fall straight across my life. But my experience of life is like this rippled shadow. Fluid, moving, beautiful. Influenced by this white gauzy curtain that adds texture and meaning to the experiences that happen both to me and “out there.”