God looking down at me

I made a little survey this week. A few questions about where you work. A handful of people answered, and I enjoyed reading their replies.

The best question turned out to be: what can you see when you look up?

One person saw “a bright light shining down from the ceiling.”

Another saw “a wall of pictures I have blu-tacked, showing among other things some dahlias, a selfie, a page on Wikipedia, a chart of parcel dimensions and weights, and photos from my shows.”

And one person saw “God looking down at me and wondering why I spend so much time doing things on my website instead of meeting people in real life.”

(Alright that was me. I should perhaps mention that this week I decided to stop using Google Forms and painstakingly created a survey function right here on my own website.)

Then I asked what was within arm’s reach. My favourite answer: “Empty coffee mug. Electric socket. Blue Snowball mic. Tons of bits of paper. Ancient iPhone. Two bells from Hong Kong. A Filofax hole-punch (little used). About ten million piles of paper on the floor.”

Two bells from Hong Kong. I want to know everything about those bells.

Asked for one thing they’d never give up, people were brief. “Thinking.” “Work.”

And asked what they’d change, the answers climbed from the domestic to the cosmic: “More hoovering.” “Tidy tidy tidy! Oh please could it be tidy.” “More peace and love, less war and hate.”

Nobody set out to write a story but every answer is the start of one. That’s what I teach on the Micro-Memoir course – noticing the small, specific thing, and trusting it to carry something bigger.

So now it’s your turn. Look up. What do you see?

Take the one-minute survey – I may share some replies, anonymously, next time.