Joy is in the details!

Early morning, I set out from my hotel by the river, in the used car part of Bangkok, for breakfast at my favorite noodle soup breakfast place. I have been there many times and the route is familiar, past the piles of tons of oily smelling metal shapes, tiny shop houses, with people beginning their day and a pack of braying beagles.

That morning I took another, even smaller alley, that seemed to go vaguely in the right direction. I delighted in the quiet, the details of the worn walls surfaces, a red gate, a little open, revealing an elaborate Chinese temple and Bodhi trees taking root in cracked cement.

Something flashed in the corner of my eye and I turned to see a very subtle, very much 'a cat’, watching  on old corrugated metal fence where he had been painted. Seeing him brought a surge of unexpected joy that filled me and lit my whole day.

And, of course, the small path brought me right across the street from my favorite noodle breakfast. All so subtle and so completely full.