The Joy of Unexpected Treasures!

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By Radical Rhymes

I’ve fallen out of love with things, with aimlessly owning material things. Perhaps that’s too stark, maybe it’s just a cooling of relations. There are things that I still like or enjoy, it’s just that I don’t see having things as such an important life goal anymore. After watching the minimalism documentary, I realize that less can be more, and I certainly am coming to believe that William Morris was correct and that we should only have the useful or beautiful in our homes.

Having said that, I wanted to talk here about the pleasure of discovering unlooked for treasure. The joyous recognition that we have found something truly life enriching. Two instances spring to mind, one from my childhood, the other from early maturity.

Might as well start from the start.

Just picture this, a boy of about ten or eleven browbeaten into going with his dad on a visit to a stranger’s home. Anxious about meeting new people, annoyed at being dragged away from his latest book, knowing that the next few hours would be spent in terrible tedium, listening to adults talk about real life issues. Boring issues.

That was me. Sulking. Angry. Anticipating a thoroughly monotonous afternoon trying to impress people I didn’t know or care about with my unusually mature behavior, in other words, my ability to sit for long periods of time without speaking or moving.

To be fair I kind of knew the purpose of the visit, but I wasn’t fully cognizant of its importance. My father was going on a visit to help a struggling alcoholic. He’d been sober for six or seven years at that point, and over that time he’d moved from being a regular member of Alcoholics Anonymous to running his local meeting. It was noble work. Vital work. But I hated having to be involved. I was young and selfish and impatient.

This day though was different. The man in question owned a sweet shop. It was like entering Nirvana! He welcomed us, introduced us to his wife and family and then took us into the storeroom where he gave me an Easter egg. I couldn’t believe my luck. But that was only the beginning…

‘You probably don’t want to listen to my problems, do you? Come with me young man.’ He led me into another, smaller storeroom which was full of household junk. ‘I think this should be more to your liking’, he said, as he pulled out an old brown and battered leather suitcase. He invited me to sit in the old armchair and opened the case.

Comics! Hundreds and hundreds of them. In fact, a whole collection of Plant of the Apes comics, along with many random ones. I spent the next hour ordering them, and the time after that, reading them. I cannot express to you how excited I was. It was like finding Aladdin’s cave. The time went so quickly that when dad came to get me it was an actual shock.

While I did want to get home the thought of leaving that treasure trove behind was painful, and that pain must have been written all over me, because the man said those magic words every kid loves to hear in such situations: ‘would you like to take them with you?’

Oh, the hours I spent reading and re-rereading those comics. They were a godsend to me, especially as we didn’t have the money to buy such things. I still have them now, or most of them. Every time I pick one up, I am transported to that place, to that wonderful place where our worst fears are transformed into our greatest pleasures.

The other time I recall I was a young man trawling through a secondhand bookshop, killing time until I had to go to an evening class. This was a difficult time for me. I was working full-time, stuck in a meaningless admin job that was slowly killing me, so the evening class was an access to higher education course.

I was constantly tired, having to cycle to work (12 miles there and back), working until six pm on college days, sitting in classes until 9.30 pm and then cycling home again. I was lonely, isolated, and worried that it would all be for nothing. One particularly bad day I found myself locked in a cubicle in a dark and deserted college bathroom literally sobbing from exhaustion. A six-mile cycle ride home felt like the last straw…

But this day I’d taken the afternoon off, and I’d treated myself to some downtime and some disgustingly delicious fast food. The bookshop didn’t entirely fit into my self-nurturing anymore, once a place of joy, it had become something of a chore. I was now looking out for cheap books that would help me with my studies, rather than little slices of escapism.

And then, tucked away in a dreary corner, I saw it. An old leatherbound tome. It was a faded red with gold writing, and I was intrigued by it immediately. It turned out to be Les Miserables by Victor Hugo… I bought it even though it was expensive.

That night, at home, even though I was incredibly weary, I started to read it. The pages were gilt edged, and I had to separate them as I read, because they’d never been cut. Someone had given that book as a gift in 1913, and yet it had never been read! Well, that was almost as exciting as the story. Not quite though… What a story! So beautifully written, so humane, so tragically wonderful. It remains the only book to have brought me to tears. I recommend you read it if you haven’t. There are some difficult sections, some philosophical, some political, but what a monumental and beautiful book. It helped me through that hard time, who knew a book could be a lifebelt?

And so, two treasures, two things of beauty and value that enriched my life. Those things met and exceeded the Morris test. They were, in different ways, vehicles to a better world. Made all the more marvellous because they were so unexpected.

Radical Rhymes is a professional artist working with a range of media – predominantly animal/human portraits and landscapes – including, most recently, hand painted furniture. You can see his work on Instagram Radicalrhymes1969 or on Twitter @RhymesRadical.

For commissions, please contact him on Twitter via Direct Message or by email at: radicalrhymes@outlook.com His work is also available to buy on Etsy

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