Seeing the Blossom

April 26, 2012

English playwright Dennis Potter was prolific and had an eccentric style of writing. He saw the world in unusual ways and then added music of the lip sync variety giving rise to plays like The Singing Detective and Pennies from Heaven.

Potter died of cancer in 1994, and knowing that he was about to die, gave an interview with Sir Melvyn Bragg. In it he said “Below my window in Ross, the blossom is out in full now….it’s a plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it’s white, and looking at it through the window when I’m writing, I SEE it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it…..the fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.”

The blossom is out today. You can ruminate on the past or worry about the future. Why not live in the present tense for a moment and SEE the blossom?