I am sitting here in southern England in the safety of all of what that means, and I remember other mornings, in other places where I was awake in the wee hours. The place was a kind of isolation in the middle of the bush, on top of a high hill. Fortunately not that many early risings, really, when I count up. Roused to sentry duty. To listen to the sounds of an approach of danger. To hear the crackle on the radio. Everything, like the wind of the brush of the tree on the corrugated iron roof, was exaggerated. I imagined that, at any moment, we would be assailed by the stutter of bullets from the other soldiers who, looking back, were not the enemy really but fellow countrymen who thought that they had no choice. Then, my thoughts were not like that – no thoughts of their humanity, but only thoughts of terror, that this could be it. At any moment.
Month: April 2020
Another dawning
Early morning awakenings now into their fourth week. The news on the world service is the bleakest I have ever heard. This long haul flight is on no Dreamliner to exotica. It has no path as yet, no route plotted, just a lengthy sojourn of pre-dawn thoughts. Yet we are the lucky ones, walking distance to the wide open spaces. We can zig zag across empty roads for the social distance. There is another dawning. Somehow I need to find a light out of this. Courage is not the absence of fear. This was the morning that it returned to me. Healing is coming to terms with the way things are. That I am not able to fix this thing. It is a struggle of a life time but every experience somehow – not sure how – has to be special. Like you cannot see your life through a straw where there is no hope.
Some kind of farewell
The day hangs heavy, even in the wind. Time is now a daily motion. A Christmas quietness without killing a turkey. After the sunlight days of early April, the sky is coloured with smudged white, low overhead. The talk is of the unlock – giving false hope – but this virus is patient and a nasty piece of work. Nothing has changed and everything has changed: this is an axial moment for our species. The end of human warmth, now seen as lethal. The hug, the hand clasp endangered, like us. A forgotten memory of crowded spaces, farewell to the last embrace and peace of mind.
Before the sun arrives
Another early morning, before the light, and I am awake. My solace is tea. Thoughts I have ventured down and travelled into, steer me on a course that I want to now reverse. Like you are on a road and there is no turning space and, if there was, a ditch may catch your wheel. I find breathing helps to return and slow the pulse rate. The moon in the kitchen window throws a presence that has watched over my countless grandmothers who no doubt woke in the night, fretting. Their presence stills me and before the sun arrives, they bring a hush into the room.
Finding it
The don’t know mind I thought was something with which, in a Zen moment, I could simply come to terms with. Instead I am finding that this is knotted to something hugely messier and chaotic. Like that highway I was telling you about. It’s kind of full of people and carts and a dusty, parched road. I am looking for shelter from it, if you really want to know. A resting place for the mind, away from the crowd of thoughts, making for the don’t know.
School Of Blue 