I've been swallowed up lately, partly by design work (students and clients) but also by a rip-roaring need to clean and organize my home. When this happens, and it doesn't happen often, I try to go with it, to pour myself into the sudden obsessive need to scrub the sink and sweep the floors and rearrange furniture and throw out old magazines. Perhaps I'm clearing the decks for something big just around the corner. I can't quite see around that corner yet, though it seems my vision is clearing. Indeed, as I wipe cobwebs from the window sills, return tools and shoes and books to their rightful shelves and drawers, and tick someday-maybe tasks off an almost forgotten mental list, I notice my mind returning to order as well. The horizon is clearing. There's room again to appreciate the poetry of simple things.

For instance, these snapshots I finally downloaded from my cell phone's camera.