Flow ho ho.(THE STRAGGLER)(life lessons from jigsaw puzzles)

SANTA in his goodness brought me a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas. It is quite a splendid one: a color photograph of Schloss Neuschwanstein, the alpine folly of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, and inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. The picture is beautifully reproduced "on fine papers and thick premium board" (I am quoting from the underside of the box), with fall foliage in a score of shades from yellow to green, and some faint cirrus streaks in a blue sky over distant mountains. The castle itself is a glorious fantasy of turrets, spires, terraces, arches, balustrades, and crenellations. The whole picture is divided into 2,128 pieces, precision cut by the makers, Buffalo Games of Buffalo, N.Y. Is this a fruit of Senator Clinton's promises to revivify the commerce of our upstate regions? If it is, then so far as I am concerned Mrs. Clinton has paid her debt to society.

There is a phenomenon that psychologists call flow. I quote from an Internet dictionary: "the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity." For me, the most reliable portal to flow is a jigsaw puzzle. Set me up with one of these things and I am lost to the world until that one last piece clicks into place.

Unfortunately this is not a thing to be much desired. I have a living to earn, a wife to please, children to raise, and an old house to maintain. I don't have that many free hours to give up to flow--not, at least, until I have figured out some way to generate revenue by doing jigsaw puzzles. I therefore ration myself to one jigsaw puzzle per annum. This is my Christmas treat. Santa, of course, knows that.

As with all great enterprises, planning is the key. I make a first pass through the pieces, tipping them all out on the table, then returning them to the box one by one, but setting aside all edge and corner pieces and all skyline pieces (pieces, that is, that are sky, but with some visible fragment of mountain or castle). On a large piece of black oak tag, four feet by three, I set out the perimeter of the picture and the skyline.

Second pass: all-sky pieces. Sky is a chore, to be disposed of early in the proceedings--repetitive matching of shapes, aided only by barely-detectable differences of tint. Then will come the castle--eight or nine hundred pieces, the locations of which can in most cases be determined by careful scrutiny of the picture. After that, the mountains--harder than the castle, but not so bad as sky. Finally, the foliage. If Satan ever gets into the jigsaw-puzzle-manufacturing business, His productions will be all foliage. (Capitalization intentional there. One can never be too careful.)

With perimeter, skyline, and most of the sky done, 24 full hours have passed. Somewhere in there were meals and phone calls, sleep and ablutions. These events, however, were taking place on a different plane of existence, remote and inconsequential. Flow has well and truly set ...