BACKGROUNDS

"Chicago Theater', pastel,
by Karen Margulis

    As I was reading this morning, I stopped for a moment and listened to the background sounds in the house – the humming of the furnace in the cellar, the steady ticking of the pendulum clock, the clicking of keys as Delycia typed on her laptop -- and it started me wondering about other backgrounds in my life, other unnoticed backdrops against which the small dramas of my days are played out. In a way, my life is a little play on a stage as old as light-years and as widespread as the universe, and the backgrounds, whether miniscule or immense, are always strange in the best ways. It surprises me that I almost never notice these backgrounds -- the bright blue sky above me as I walk into the supermarket, the air circulating through Mystic in various ways, the hundreds of homes standing motionless like sets on a stage, and the light of the sunshine, which, even on cloudy days, shines around us like theater lighting. These are just some of the superb settings in the center of which I play out the short-lived show of my life -- settings that would astound me if I ever started noticing them.