Introduction to Pad Well Spent

Do You know how often I wonder whether I have spent a day well? I'm sure you wonder too - admit it, you do. So, I've come up with this little bit of space - a space to remind myself of how I've been spending my time. A way of showing my spending habits - did I get something for that minute I just spent, for that day - did I get any change back? Was it a good investment? Stuff like that. The older I get, the more important it becomes to me to know that I have been spending my time well.

My latest wake-up utterance is - "okay, this is a Tuesday you won't get back - spend it well," and I get to the details of my day. Now, I have a place to write them. It may be silliness - it may be something really important, like today. I saw the mating dance of a common everyday sparrow in my backyard. Forty-nine years I've watched sparrows, forty-nine years I've only noticed that they are a common brown and sing a not so pretty song. But today, I saw one trying to win the affections of a sprite little sparrow (who was entirely more interested in the seeds I'd just put out) trying his best hip-hop sparrow dance - chest out, hop, hop, hop left - then pause - hop, hop, hop right - shake feathers - hop, hop, hop, left - then pause - hop, hop, hop right and so on and so on. She didn't care. Her eyes were on the prize - the seeds.

This scene, taking place just three feet in front of me, reminded me of a boy in a movie, I believe it was The Naked Prey. A young aboriginine boy tries his best to win the affection of a young English or American girl who, for some strange reason I can't recall, is in Africa and is lost and alone. There's a young African boy, also lost, trying to get back to his village - but he is short of becoming a man - one of the things he must do to become a man, is win over a woman. She's in a hut. He comes across the hut - finds her sleeping; frightens her to see him when she wakes up; I think for a minute they were okay with each other until he decides, this is the woman he wants - this is the one he will win over as his wife before he can go back home. She doesn't know that, for him, failure to win her over is to die.

The young boy starts - for days he tries. She is frightened of all his antics - thinking he is actually practicing some ritual to maybe kill her later. He tries and realizes finally that he cannot win her. All his prancing, puffing, coloring his face failed to win her over. The young girl realizes that he has stopped finally. Exhausted, and happy to still be alive, she sees her opportunity to make a run for it. She bolts out of the safety of the hut she'd been hiding in. As she turns a corner she finds the boy -- dead; he'd hung himself. Failure was not an option for him. He couldn't return to his village a man - without a woman. In that instant she realizes - and the look of crushing guilt over not having understood (at least, maybe I wanted her to feel guilt.) She runs but I never forgot that image.

And so I watch the little bird, he falters - the seeds I put out are too delicious to ignore any longer. He stops his puffing his wings for a nano second, takes some seeds - and prances about for a bit longer. Girl sparrow just wants the seeds (Hagen Seed?) He can't spend anymore time here - he takes off. I watch- a part of me wants to go look around the bushes, make sure there's no little hung bird, or kamakazi flight path....
No, no such thing - all's good. I go back to my coffee. The sparrows they keep eating the seeds. It was an hour of my morning well spent.

and the coffee, it was good.