Jigsaw Puzzles
I have an aversion to repetitive tasks, and yet….there are some I can’t help but be soothed by. I know what is going to happen, I know what to do and – YAY! – I even know how to do it, without any bother.
I say I dislike jigsaws, but I suspect this has more to do with fear that I may become swallowed up by yet another obsession. I hardly need another: cards, patience, computer games, television series, films I have seen a hundred times and never tire of…I also can’t see the point in spending however many hours sorting through pieces, fitting them all together, and then, when the whole thing is done, taking the picture to pieces in a fraction of the time it took to compile it! Jigsaws are certainly not a very rational pastime, are they?
But I have been doing them, even so. It started with a very pretty five hundred piece that I found in the local toyshop, then another of the same size by the same artist, and most recently a thousand pieces that I picked up at a church fundraiser in Shetland. When a regular came round the table after me and collected several others to do on the dark winter evenings with the rest of the family, I almost offered her the one I had bought, but hung back.
Since I have a history of abandoning projects half-finished, I wanted to prove I could take on a larger puzzle and complete it.
That seemed a worthwhile thing to prove. Also, in becoming absorbed sorting and finding pieces, the mind is afforded a rest: we have to concentrate, so cannot dwell on our usual stuff, and instead I found myself thinking encouraging thoughts, singing loudly and feeling delighted when I located the exact piece I might be looking for. Hoping to solve the mystery that is the attraction of puzzles, I have concluded that they are wonderful because a single piece often looks like nothing on earth, and yet, when placed snugly with its brethren in the right place, it transforms into something meaningful. Ah, that’s what it is! Of course! The trick of the eye is amusing and instructive, in its small way.
One of the odder side-effects is seeing life with jigsaw lines running across it. I have completed the puzzle, and shall put it back in its box in a few days. Having done what I set out to do, I shall next decide whether to keep the puzzles to do again or give them all away so that I am not tempted to ‘waste any more time’ with them. Who would have thought that puzzles could raise so many existential questions?
