Art Heals: Pennies

I have always found that walking helps me think. A Stanford University study found that walking can actually help you improve brain function, leading to greater creativity.  Now that we are sheltering in place, for many of us  the daily walk is our only form of exercise, our only contact with the world outside our homes (besides the  grocery store or pharmacy, both of which have led to an increase, rather than a surcease of tension lately).
I do spend a lot of my walking time looking down, as an accident some years ago put me in a wheelchair for almost a year, so I am extra careful to avoid tripping and falling.  ( I do look up and around, of course, but  I try not to be moving forward when I do so.)  Looking down offers a different perspective on the world.  There is much to notice down there.  Sidewalk cracks and fallen blossoms become nature’s Jackson Pollacks.  Discarded objects tell tales of earlier passers-by.  And there are pennies.
I used to pick up the pennies I’d spot on the street—but under strict rules.  If they were heads up, they were mine.  Tails, I would leave them for someone else.  Sharing the luck equitably, I figured.   As a child I would supplement my allowance by checking the ground around  parking meters. Very lucrative in those days, when your allowance was 50 cents.)
So today, I walk along, masked and gloved, and as I spot the pennies, I regretfully pass them by.  I don’t want to touch anything outside my home, even gloved, these days. It saddens me a bit, passing up the luck.  My world seemed so much wider in those long ago 50 cents allowance days, when finding a few pennies, a nickel, and wow, a dime, could open up endless possibilities of future purchases, or maybe even savings.
After I got home yesterday, I dug into my purse and found a few pennies lurking there.  I have decided to scatter them on my next walk, to try to bring back the feeling of the wider world of possibilities, to share the luck once again.
I love this collage painting by Dina Charara, scattering Pixie Dust.  Art Heals.