Would the world really function if it were not for the crumbs we scatter hither and yon as we eat our bread? I know that I’ve had a great meal if the crumbs dot the around my plate as if they chickens were eating there. Crumbs speak to our existential doubts about life, the world, and all the rest. By contemplating our crumbs we are reaffirmed as to who we are, that we are alive, and that time passes, moving to a lower level of energy, always to a lower energy. Bread is particularly important, whether it be actual bread, bread or a metaphor for all that we do, say, eat, create, sing, compose, paint, write, bake, cook, or imagine. Man may not live by bread alone, but bread is always a good start for creating new crumbs. I am forever brushing crumbs off of my shirt, but not because I’m a slob (well maybe a little), but because the crumbs represent the creative process through the consumption of that which has already been created. Crumbs are the outpouring overflow that comes from the fires of creation, an ongoing process for the active, happy mind that can find no rest unless it is building, painting, conducting, or rhyming something new. We are nothing if we are not the very crumbs which we drop all around us. One must become the crumbs, unafraid of being wiped up or swept away. In the creative process, crumbs will fly everywhere, and there will be those who gather around you to pick at your crumbs. The active mind will never be content with absolute tidiness, with a stark cleanliness that denies the very existence of crumbs. Creation rises up from the ashes of crumbs, chaos, and disorder, and the creative process is always generating new crumbs as you chew your toast. Crumbs fall randomly, but instead of being a worry, we should rejoice in the serendipitous nature of where the crumbs fall or that they fall at all. Crumbs are a healthy sign of process, of movement, of creation. Neat-nicks will always feel faint and their hearts will flutter when the crumbs come raining down. There has to be more to life than worrying about crumbs, a few crumbs, testimony to a wonderful meal, of consumption, of the promise of creation, of a breaking with the status quo, of change. Crumbs are a sign of life, whereas terminal cleanliness only speaks of a disturbed and unhappy mind that cannot bear the thought of a stray crumb, cluttering up an otherwise spotless table top. There is no virtue in spotlessness, just as there is no virtue in too much clutter. Perhaps the healthy mind, the scatterer of crumbs, needs a place that is more Goldilocks in nature–not too clean, not to filthy–in order to thrive. In a sense, Goldilocks and her words are also crumbs, bits of creative energy that spin a new myth about identity, being, and truth. Without crumbs, creating and gathering them, and creating some more, we choose immobility as a mode of transportation and nothing gets done, and we plod along in our ruts, and our daily routines are dull and boring, meaningless. So as we break our bread, cut our meat, spoon our soup, spread the butter, and fork the pasta, we generate new things, new meanings, new questions, new shapes, new aesthetics, new poetics, which in turn produce new crumbs. In our crumbs we see ourselves, perhaps darkly, as if in a mirror, the perhaps more clearly, embracing both our ashes and our crumbs, in this little thing we call life.