A Reason to Stay

 We wake up not too early in the morning and sit at the table eating our breakfasts and looking out the window.

This week and last, we worked on catching up on all The New Yorker magazine crossword puzzles. Some of them are harder than others. All of them make us groan and laugh. Our areas of knowledge compliment each other, so we always finish the puzzle. 

I could not knit my rabbits their sweaters because I did not have the right size double pointed needles. !! I always think I am so prepared, that really, I have every needle, don't I? Apparently not. I had to order size 4 dpns. Meantime, I started a summer cardigan in cotton. 

It took me three swatches and a note to the designer to finally feel confident enough to cast on. (Of course, I had to order needles for this too once I got close enough to the required gauge!)

What I have really been thinking about lately, is an Iranian movie called Taste of Cherry by Abbas Kiarostami. The title of this movie comes from a story one of the men in the movie tells. He explains how he felt hopeless in life and left his home one morning biding his wife and children goodbye in the normal way, but knowing inside this was the last they would see of each other. He went off into the countryside and climbed a tree with the aim of hanging himself, but hesitated for some long length of time--and then he noticed cherries in the tree. He ate the cherry and the glory of the world burst out for him. How could a person leave the world, never again to taste the sweetness of a cherry? 

Now, I know some may see this as--well, what about his wife and children? Weren't they important enough for him to stay? But the depressed person does not think that way. For this man, the visceral experience of the cherry opened his eyes, his senses, stirred in him what it is to be human, and he went back home and his family was none the wiser of what he had gone through that day.

I think about this a lot. Taste of Cherry is an unusual movie, but the ideas in it always tickle at the edges of my mind. Often, I think, all of us, need to pause at the seemingly mundane and rediscover the wonder of living. Breathe like a poet for a moment.  For me, this week, the sound of rain caught me. The smell of rain. One of the great pleasures of life. Another reason to stay.