work

Street Sweepers and Bookkeepers (Thx to MLK)

Submitted by Carolyn on November 16, 2009 - 9:14pm
Recommend

 

Tonight I am surrounded by numbers, papers, files, boxes, and all manner of things I don't care for.  I am doing the books for my parents' restaurant.  Frankly, I've been feeling just a touch sorry for myself, trapped here doing paperwork when I should be MAKING ART.  (You have to imagine that last bit delivered dramatically, possibly with an imitation English accent.)
 
Fortunately, my pity party has been cut short by Martin Luther King, who can always be relied upon for a little perspective.  Here's what he just told me:
 
“If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”- MLK
 
And so, I will do the books as artfully as I can.  Which, frankly, isn't much.  But it's something.
 
That's All,
CA