“One day I will lie nowhere
with an angel at my side.” ― Paul Klee
It’s still dark as I write this piece.
I’ve the dog playing with a ball, a small coffee ready to drink and some soulful music playing through my computer.
It won’t be long before the first light begins to show itself.
And that’s always a moment of great portent.
It’s at times like this (I’m reading a Mary Oliver book — Long life: Essays and other writings — to go alongside my musing) that I know I’m in the grace period of my life.
But far from feeling melancholic or depressed, I feel blessed.
Like so many Saturdays, I’ll head off this morning to Dartington Hall to sip on a small coffee in The Green Table cafe, and then I’ll walk around the Estate. It’s my morning meditation.
And I know it’s not forever.
In fact, I’m reminded of this passage from the book Die Wise:
The storyteller [Martin Prechtel] had grace to go with his discernment, and he knew that while we sat quietly some had some hope that he would say a little more from his own experience of the strangeness of where we come from. He had been dealing with tourists from El Norte for years. “Well,” he said, “it seems to me that where you come from, everybody wakes up every day expecting to live.” He shook his head slowly back and forth a few times. This for him was not just an example of how strange it is here, where I come from. It was the fullest expression and the essence of our strangeness, perched on the trembling branch of our morning habit. That was his unnecessary but gracious gloss on what was already a full and true thing. He was done with the subject.
And we do: wake up every day expecting to live.
But that’s not universal, and it’s no accident that I find myself increasingly, before I drop off to sleep, saying a short prayer or contemplating my life/death.
“Will I be here tomorrow?”
It’s a very different way to live your life.
Anyhow, I’ve nothing to add to this short post. Instead, I’ll leave you with the last stanza of Antonio Machado’s fantastic poem The Countryside of Castile:
Mankind owns four things
that are no good at sea:
rudder, anchor, oars,
and the fear of going down.
Photo by Ashleigh Joy Photography on Unsplash