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Honing A Craft

It is a slow Sunday morning and we don't have any plans for the day. DB, J and I are fighting the remnants of a cold that has knocked us out to varying degrees in the past week. I happened by the NYT as I do on some Sundays and read this essay by Jhumpa Lahiri that was ever so perfect for my mood today.
Her devotion to perfecting her craft is palpable in every sentence. It seems to me, pieces like this one reveal Lahiri's personality so much more than her autobiographical novels. Without having shared anything about her life, she is able to spark curiosity - a reader wants to know more about her and how her mind works. 
She writes "I hear sentences as I’m staring out the window, or chopping vegetables, or waiting on a subway platform alone. They are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, handed to me in no particular order, with no discernible logic. I only sense that they are part of the thing."  
I know for a fact that I will remember these lines when I look out the window of the kitchen watching a couple of raucous cardinals only a few shades apart from my bowl of red bell peppers. I may pay more attention to gathering my thoughts instead of letting them drift away unattended.
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