Curiosity

"Curiosity doesn't matter any more. These days people don't want to be transported to emotional territories where they don't know how to react." --Hector Babenco, filmmaker

"Curiosity endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in their own mode of life which springs from their cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will." --Alistair Cooke

I'm taking myself out of the driver's seat today. I'll start by not thinking what the next word or idea might be in this piece of writing. This might mean sitting in quiet for long stretches of time.

My mother said the new bakery in the Outer Sunset of San Francisco is hiring a baker. I am a baker. It's true I have a job, I have a decent job, one with health insurance. I have what some might call a grown up job. Sometimes people are impressed when I tell them what my job is.

When I wore my hair blonde, I felt like I was wearing an itchy sweater. I sort of feel that way with my job, like the season necessitates the discomfort and I'm waiting for summer. But it is summer.

There were times I worked as a baker and I always felt like a real person when I was asked what I did for a living and could answer, "I'm a baker." This is no offense to those who do what I currently do. They work hard and change people's lives. Some have told me, in the job I have now, that I have inspired them. I have no reason to doubt these individuals. I can see the truth in their postures. I've never inspired anyone as a baker.

However, when I'm a baker, two things happen: 1) I feel like going to work is like going to church & 2) I feel like I never put myself above or below anyone by claiming the title of baker.

I suppose this posting has nothing to do with curiosity.

It has to do everything with me having an attitude about what I am or am not supposed to do. What if I stopped categorizing everybody and everything and putting them on my complicated ladders in my mind. What If I bashed the ladders to the ground and put each splinter-piece into the sand, sticking straight up and there were hundreds of even-ish sticks in the sand and I wandered around them like some kind of obstacle course and I was so confused because I didn't know which of the stakes was mine for that time of my life. And, I was so confused that I realized, now, I'm right where I'm supposed to be, knowing nothing and living in wonder.