A lazy, early Sunday morning with the soft undertones of aimlessness that only come to one unexpectedly nowadays. The perfect day, the sunshine warm on your back and your deeply veined hand. A particular combination of brightness and shade suddenly reminds you of other places and other times, both of which seem infinitely distant during the normal proceedings of the week. This unbidden reminder of home, as if that was your truest impulse, as you stand under a tree, the light resting on half of your face.
Offshore. You look back over your shoulder, seeing if you can catch it. A second thought: no-one knows how the day will pan out...happiness or disaster?
Arrangements are made and the pink and white balloons filled. A sprightly group of people help with the setting up of the folded wooden tables. It amazes you to think of how good it would be to work as a team. The crew go about their task for this morning with a quiet confidence and there is something reassuring about only doing what one has to. Then the makeshift merry-go-around is assembled by a man with a dark brown face, square shoulders and a square jaw.
The guests arrive and the kids run without a care in the world amid the lengthening shadows. The old ones are fewer each year. They sit with folded legs and talk less amongst each other. A stunned silence is interrupted by a burst of gaiety and a childish sense of humour but for the most part there is a disbelieving look on their faces. There is no acceptance. How can there be? You, too, despite your expectations, have also grown old and no matter how much you wave it off or stave off the growing reality you increasingly find yourself in a no-man's land. It is as if a drawbridge is being raised and preparations for a journey into silence are being made; a silence without wisdom.
This inner seriousness is inappropriate. What does it mean, today, to laugh well? Little H looks on, bemused, the saddest eyes, or is it me?
You have your books, which tug at you, helping you through the inertia. Yourcenar starts with its wonderful, measured tone, its sense of calmness that comes from looking back at a full life with tranquility in ones heart. All that happened had to happen, say the Muslims. You think this, this perfect equanimity, is impossible but those who possess faith and who do not waver have some inclination of this.
An uncle stands and greets people with a wonderful, resolute smile despite, you're sure, feeling terribly unwell. His face has darkened appreciably over the last year but one doesn't like to speculate. The other old ones collapse on the cushioned chairs and munch down an extra-large packet of potato crisps, craning their hands above their mouths and letting the chips fall. Time forgives, has no qualm about grace, knowing she is victorious.
What the mind sees clearly, you think to yourself, will always remain with you, always be a part, even if only a small part, of who you are; what you see with truthfulness and compassion forms a part of your habitual gestures, the way you look on other things and people. That's the theory.
But is that true? I look at my bookshelves and am lucky if I can remember the broad outline of the story. I have a few words or sentences marked, as if the whole thing could be condensed to some one-line wonder. But you can't carry that around with you. Has anything taken root, after all? Is all that learning destined to fall away? But to read well is not to live well. All those words you thought you'd say one day as useless and redundant as many of the books in an old town library. The quips, the jokes, the line of beauty, the immediate flash of understanding, the gradual coming to focus in your mind's eye, as if two distinct images suddenly overlapped, the memories that hold you spellbound that shine in the dust. All of that seems to be slipping, eternally and irremediably slipping into the dark recesses of one's mind.
Offshore. You look back over your shoulder, seeing if you can catch it. A second thought: no-one knows how the day will pan out...happiness or disaster?
Arrangements are made and the pink and white balloons filled. A sprightly group of people help with the setting up of the folded wooden tables. It amazes you to think of how good it would be to work as a team. The crew go about their task for this morning with a quiet confidence and there is something reassuring about only doing what one has to. Then the makeshift merry-go-around is assembled by a man with a dark brown face, square shoulders and a square jaw.
The guests arrive and the kids run without a care in the world amid the lengthening shadows. The old ones are fewer each year. They sit with folded legs and talk less amongst each other. A stunned silence is interrupted by a burst of gaiety and a childish sense of humour but for the most part there is a disbelieving look on their faces. There is no acceptance. How can there be? You, too, despite your expectations, have also grown old and no matter how much you wave it off or stave off the growing reality you increasingly find yourself in a no-man's land. It is as if a drawbridge is being raised and preparations for a journey into silence are being made; a silence without wisdom.
This inner seriousness is inappropriate. What does it mean, today, to laugh well? Little H looks on, bemused, the saddest eyes, or is it me?
You have your books, which tug at you, helping you through the inertia. Yourcenar starts with its wonderful, measured tone, its sense of calmness that comes from looking back at a full life with tranquility in ones heart. All that happened had to happen, say the Muslims. You think this, this perfect equanimity, is impossible but those who possess faith and who do not waver have some inclination of this.
An uncle stands and greets people with a wonderful, resolute smile despite, you're sure, feeling terribly unwell. His face has darkened appreciably over the last year but one doesn't like to speculate. The other old ones collapse on the cushioned chairs and munch down an extra-large packet of potato crisps, craning their hands above their mouths and letting the chips fall. Time forgives, has no qualm about grace, knowing she is victorious.
What the mind sees clearly, you think to yourself, will always remain with you, always be a part, even if only a small part, of who you are; what you see with truthfulness and compassion forms a part of your habitual gestures, the way you look on other things and people. That's the theory.
But is that true? I look at my bookshelves and am lucky if I can remember the broad outline of the story. I have a few words or sentences marked, as if the whole thing could be condensed to some one-line wonder. But you can't carry that around with you. Has anything taken root, after all? Is all that learning destined to fall away? But to read well is not to live well. All those words you thought you'd say one day as useless and redundant as many of the books in an old town library. The quips, the jokes, the line of beauty, the immediate flash of understanding, the gradual coming to focus in your mind's eye, as if two distinct images suddenly overlapped, the memories that hold you spellbound that shine in the dust. All of that seems to be slipping, eternally and irremediably slipping into the dark recesses of one's mind.
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