Remnants

endless variation

We leave tell-tale remnants of ourselves here and there.  Some lie in bright heaps of sunlight and others drift to adhere like faux spiderwebs sold at Halloween.

I left a crabby remnant at the grocery store the other day. I couldn’t find what I was looking for in a new arrangement of health supplements that seems to suit the arrangers rather than the consumers.  One might mention old dogs and new tricks, but I still hold on to the tail of that crabby remnant, draping it more carefully over my supremely logical argument and tucking it in around my grumpiness.

Sometimes remnants are more graceful, however, more generous, and find residence in memory, expanding the soul beyond its previous confines.  A waft of perfumed air on a walk, when you have to stop and go back and lift your nose to try to find the wave of it again.  Ephemeral, yet deeply satisfying.  A gesture, a touch, an acknowledgement — quiet, quick, with lasting import.

If we are lucky in our remnants, they include the explosion of belly-laugh, or a worldview that refuses to take the day-to-day plodding too seriously, finding tiny amusements to freshen the moment and lift the spirit.  Revisiting these remnants of grace sweeten and settle, softening the form of the day.

I gather my remnants and hold them close to me — savoring, sorting, making middens of these and those.  Over there, a heap of situations I’d rather forget — the ones that reappear uninvited and stick in gray patches to the edges of insecurities.  And there, the moments of delight, a far bigger pile, that I can sort through gratefully, relishing and wrapping them around myself like a perfumed silken shawl.

There’s a rainy-day pile too, for that 32nd-rainy-day-in-a-row, the pile of small pleasures that keep you from leaping out of your skin and dancing over the horizon.  And on the occasion of rare delight, they accompany me as I leap and dance away.

shell remnants

On my patio in Australia, under the corrugated metal awning, on a rusting Moroccan table lie my shell-remnants, gathered over the years on my afternoon walks at on the beach.  Rarely does the sea offer up the whole, but rather the fascinating bits — inner twist, fluted edge, striped arch.  Sensuous curves and spines that invite the finger-tip and call to the palm.

Tiny spiders have taken up residence under the limpets, and I reorganize their efforts as I examine, and sort, and fondle.  The same bits are endlessly fascinating.  Some with shiny nacre inside and others with keyholes on top.  This kind from Tallow, that from Lennox, or Main Beach or Belongil or Brunswick Heads.  The wind rearranges as the sea once did, and so do I.

On a Saturday morning, I move a few bits of shell to make room for my tea and a few small squares of dark chocolate.  I settle into the leisure of the Sydney Morning Herald and the weekend Australian, lounging in the air heavy with frangipani.  I lift my cup for a sip of the aromatic Jade Oolong and breathe deeply.  I’m drawn again to examine the shells at my side, wrapped in my own sweet remnants, piled and draped in bright heaps of sunlight, even in the shade.