This weekend I found myself in a forrest of carpet. Great columns of discarded fabric, the ends of which stood upright, offering great value and potential death simultaneously. Each was studded with various patterns, flecked with piercings of colour and offered to caress in many ways - from soft downiness to a full on sports massage.

We were there to investigate a new carpet of course - though it may have provided an enjoyable setting for a game of laser quest. This is for our upstairs hallway and stairs, and choose it we eventually did - after contrasting colours, deciding on textures and considering the hardiness and cost of the material. Decisions like this always present to me as upheavals - events that take away from the established pattern of life, yet this time was not the same.

Normally I would approach these excursions in a spirit of resentment, as a waste of the potential of the weekend, an infringement on my time and quite possibly my civil liberties! But in painting and blogging more I have reorganised the way I use and see time - by giving more to what I feel I should be doing it means that I no longer worry I am reducing my opportunities to be creative. True, I still find the process of sorting and deciding the exact object for purchase frustrating - I am either too concerned about its 'rightness', or unable to see its value; yet this time the idea of making the house a better place to live was something that had value in itself.

What I mean by this is that for the first time in a long while I could connect myself to the activity I was doing. This was not another person, this was not happening elsewhere; no, it was a choice I had made, and one I felt completely at home with. It was because of this that I can feel the textures, the smells and the nuances of the experience: the fusty smell of the underlay, the courseness and the softness of the fabric, and the joy in seeing the salesman nearly lose the sale through not listening to my wife. 

By letting go I can be more in the moment around me, I can engage in the world... and probably get a better carpet too.