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Why pay big bucks when for no money at all you can fill the spaces of your heart: the space for beauty, for novelty, for humour, for compassion. Cheap thrills keep me going; here are a few recent ones.
Once a week I grind flaxseed. You know what flaxseeds look like: those hard-shelled brown seeds, slick on the surface, about the size of the scale insect that eventually killed my bay laurel plant. Flax seed does you no good at all unless it is ground, and once ground it must be refrigerated. So I grind it weekly and keep the ground flax seed in the refrigerator. The unground seed is in a glass jar on a pantry shelf. I do the grinding in a small electric coffee grinder reserved for spices and flax—never used for coffee.
Once a week I fill up the grinder from the glass jar, set the jar on the counter, and grind. The vibration from the grinding is transferred through the counter to the jar, and here's what happens: the flax seed, having just been tilted for pouring, is heaped up to one side of the jar. When the vibration begins, the slick seeds slide across one another, delicately, in a quick little dance. The first time I noticed this I was startled. It looked as if the seeds were alive (infested with bugs, perhaps?) and moving. It took me aback until I understood why they were doing their slide-dance. Now I over-grind my flax seed on purpose because I don't want to stop the dance.
For a cheap thrill, then, watch flax seeds slide to the rhythm of an electric grinder.
For another cheap thrill, keep your ears open on public transit. If the thought of making eye-contact is daunting, then keep your eyes on your book, but listen. One morning as the subway pulled into Yonge station, the young Asian woman beside me stood to signal that she was going to move to the exit once the train came to a stop. I shoved my legs aside to give her room. In front of me the man from the seat perpendicular to us also stood. Just as the train stopped the man leaned over to the young woman, who was immaculately dressed and ready for work. I couldn't quite hear what he said. Luckily, she couldn't either (or she heard and didn't believe her ears), so she asked him to repeat it. A little louder, he said, "Excuse me, but do you have a pair of tweezers?" She politely said no.
I was left bemused, amused, astounded. What was the meaning of this question? Did he really want to borrow a stranger's tweezers? Was this code? Were they both spies? Are tweezers the new cigarettes, that one might seek to borrow one from a stranger? Is this a post-modern pick-up line? The possibilities kept me entertained and even took me away from the new, six-pound Elizabeth George novel I was foolish enough to be toting around for the day.
Cheap thrills. It was daffodil time. Daffy-down-dilly. Lavender's blue, dilly-dilly. I don't see fields of daffodils, but I do see garden borders filled with them. Or are they daffodils at all? I have failed, over the years, to learn the distinctions between those three versions of the trumpet-flowers: the daffodil, the jonquil, and the narcissus. I must admit that not really knowing which is which has not kept me from pretending that I know. I confidently pointed out examples of all three types to three-year-old Georgia last spring. I figured that given her age she would forget what I'd taught her. Eventually she may ferret out the truth for herself.
Flax seed. Eavesdropping. Daffodils. I'll welcome my pleasures wherever I find them.
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