Today I Am A Small Blue Thing

Today I am
A small blue thing
Made of china
Made of glass

I am cool and smooth and curious
I never blink
I am turning in your hand
Turning in your hand
Small blue thing
~Suzanne Vega, Small Blue Thing

I was on my walk, and of course the semi-frozen puddles beckoned me, because they had cool stuff going in in them. I am impossible to go for walks with. You will find me, like a three-year-old, hunched over - or jumping into - every puddle!

What is that girl doing?
Why is she down on the ground?
Is she . . . praying?

This is actually a frozen bubble inside a semi-frozen puddle by the side of the road, but it looks like a lot of different things to me. Like marble. Like glass. Like a tiny Earth, but without the green stuff, only blue. Tiny, shiny, and precious. A marvel. Where did it get its blue from? Borrowed from the sky, I think.

I remember when Suzanne Vega's song came out. It grabbed me and stuck with me, and I had to keep calling up the WPSU folk show, which was on the radio on weekend mornings locally, to request it. I think I requested it for every single chapter I wrote. There was something about the song that soothed me.

I was writing my honor's thesis in the spring of 1986, and it was on Thoreau (and Walden, mostly, though we dragged in some of his adventures in Maine, as well), and my topic was Thoreau's concept of wild time, rather than civilized time. Every weekend, I wrote a chapter, as I listened to the radio. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

Every Monday, I reviewed my new chapter with my thesis advisor, Wilma Ebbitt, one of the best editors the world has ever known (in my opinion). She taught me to look closely, and actually see. And then to look even CLOSER than that. She taught me to prize economy of phrase*, and to love the written word.

She showed me, by her example, that it might take a lifetime to truly understand and adore a work; that a truly GOOD work will stand up to high scrutiny; and that it will yield even further delights, over time. She edited my writings with a pencil, never a red pen; she said red ink was too jarring to the author, pencil, more gentle.

She was one of my first and last great teachers. We did Thoreau together the first semester I was in college, and I was instantly hooked. She would stand at the front of the class, all 90 or so pounds of her, reading Walden: In wildness is the preservation of the world, she said, with a faraway look. Perfect indeed that we should wrap it up together with Walden, again, my final semester. Bookends to my learning.

When my brain pops up with a bit of Thoreau, which is often, the words are his, but the voice speaking the words is sometimes hers. I remember her laughter, like tiny bells, as she read her favorite parts.

As happy as the first spider in a new house, she said, and then her laughter rang out, rose into the sky and scattered, like tiny birds. Yes, yes, isn't that lovely, she said.

And it was.
Oh, yes, it was.

My soundtrack can only be this one: Suzanne Vega, with Small Blue Thing.

For Wilma Robb Ebbitt, 1918 - 2000.


*Economy of phrase being a lesson I am clearly still learning, as I know sometimes I DO go on and on, LOL!   :-)