A California poppy on top of Windy HillSorry guys, you're going to have to be patient with me about this Friday Figure Fix thing. The column is slowly cooking in my head, and it will emerge fully formed at some point.
In the meantime, I was reading a new book called Drive, by Daniel Pink. It's interesting, a pop-business-culture examination of what motivates people. He opens one of the middle chapters with a snippet of poetry I've never come across before, but really enjoyed:
You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation,
you have only to watch his eyes:
a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,
wear the same rapt expression, forgetting
themselves in a function.
How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.
- W.H. Auden
I love discovering beautiful things in unexpected places.
