ma gumption

daphne almost at the end of their blooming in the terracotta gardens this early morning

I like the word ‘gumption’ because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption. 

A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption. 

 If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, create a new masterpiece, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good. 

Robert Pirsig  - author of Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (the Prince's favourite book)

Last night the Prince arrived home (around 4:30pm) to find me (with les entire Gang) stretched out on our bed in the chocolate brown bedroom nursing a glass of wine (I don't drink) & I had taken a teeny 1mg, under the tongue, pill - ativan. Ativan & wine, ahhhh!, a sure badness killer, one I'm not necessarily proud to confess of nor would I feel comfortable recommending it (works like a charm). Probably much more healthy to do some yoga, go race around a block or 2, rake some leaves, houseclean (uh huh !?!) but no - it is my, go-to "break the glass dome", my mind is racing and not in a good way, les emergency ! cure for the big bad yucks.

The Prince grabbed a beer and sat in the chair at the end of the bed to listen to my woes. At the end of it all when I was telling him how all these sad & frightening woes had completely drained my productivity yesterday & rendered me kinda brain dead he said

You just lost your gumption. You fell into a gumption trap (of worry & care, obsessing about bad things that you really can't change much). Care connects with quality by way of gumption. If you've fallen into a gumption trap your enthusiasm is lost (temporarily) and it's very difficult to create any kind of quality & care with no enthusiasm or no gumption. 

Shut ! Up !! I say I lost my gumption --- omg I fell into to a big, black gumption trap

He'd been reading Zen & the Art of Motorcycle maintenance on the plane home (the one and only book he owns, which he takes everywhere he might have to sit & wait). His bookmark, his boarding pass, placed just at the end of the 25 pages discussing gumption & gumption traps. Coincidence ? - I think not.

20 more thrilling moments from the past week in & around 29 Black Street