Foliage Epiphany

Today I swept leaves.

Usually this would not be cause for a celebration on blogspot, but today was different.

I had an epiphany.

It was really exciting.


I suddenly understood the order of things in my life, and in life in general. I began to spin a metaphor as I swept the leaves. Sweeping leaves is like writing an essay, or doing anything orderly in general. First, you start by choosing where you want to begin sweeping, much like you choose what you want to write about. You narrow down the spot from say, the yard, to the front yard right in front of the house in particular. That's your thesis. So at first, there's just so many leaves all over the place that you end up kinda sweeping from everywhere, because there's just so much mess you can't quite figure out what system you're going to use to do the job right. That's your rough draft, you know, the spewing of your ideas onto a piece of paper. Then, when you see what is working and what is not, you can decide where to begin. You begin closest to the curb, sweeping the leaves onto the street because there are just some leaves that are NOT going to get picked up. You're not Superman. Similarly, you decide that some of the crap you just plopped on that paper isn't worth writing about at all. OK, so now that you've done that, you can begin to form the clumps that you know you're going to pick up. Say hello to your body paragraph outline. Hello.

Right. So now that you've done that, you check meticulously to make sure you haven't left five leaves astray in one place. That's bad form. You decide, do I want to sweep this to the curb, or is this close enough to my clump that I don't have to put in too much effort and can safely pick it up? Now that you've decided how much work you're willing to do to either put it in the clump or kick it to the curb, you begin pickup. As with anything you do where something can fall out, i.e. your dustpan, you bring your garbage bag close. You carefully pick up as many leaves as you can without losing the majority, and easily empty it into your garbage bag. Welcome to the end of your body paragraphs, and also your conclusion. How much can you say without being redundant? How much can you say without being precise or succinct? Great, you've made some decisions. Sometimes, you'll bite off more than you can chew, which just means that you'll have much more to clean up and more time to waste. If you're sweeping and it's a nice day and you're not pressured, this is fine. But when you see the rain clouds of your deadline coming, you'd better get it as correctly as you can the first time.

Right then. You've picked it all up. You give it the once-over. It seems okay. You go up and down the parameters of the area. You see a couple of leaves that could easily be thrown to the curb. You do so. You are glad now. Everything is neat. You give it it the twice-over. How could you have missed that humongous leaf right there! You pick it up with your hands and move it to the curb. You get down and dirty. It's cool though, now it looks really neat. You see that there are a couple of really small leaves that are sort of looking at you and staring you down. You ignore them, because you can't get everything. Besides, more leaves are bound to fall. You'll save it for next time.

During your cleanup, people have been walking by. What do you do? You say "Good morning." And they say "Good morning." And everything is well and good, because sometimes you have to take a break when your hand is getting too itchy to hold a broom or to type any more words on the keyboard. You stop, but only for a little while. You must keep your momentum. You must see your project through. And then, you invite people to look at your handiwork. Because it looked damn good until the wind blew again and you had another deadline.