A tumbling profusion

The great thing about growing plants—flowers, fruit or vegetables— is that when you grow them close together, or allow random seeds to grow, they arrange themselves. They make accommodation with one another to catch the sun, and achieve a tumbling profusion, such as we may find in wild or semi-wild places. As for my backyard, I dug up some potatoes last Sunday and we had them for lunch. I can hardly call them “homegrown”, for that implies intention. They are serendipitous, the result of a series of mistakes. Running out of potatoes months ago, I’d bought some from the Medina Cash and Carry around the corner, past their best so that bits had to be cut out and put in the new compost bin. Then I couldn’t wait till the compost had fully rotted but dug some into the garden. With their own lust for life, they grew. By the same route we have acquired several other potential vegetables such as melon or pumpkin—will have to wait and see which. And the rest is populated from saved seeds.

The resulting wilderness is a perfect place to contemplate—fancy term for “do nothing”. And to just see what happens. One thing that happens from doing nothing is going into your own space, instead of constantly trying to adjust to the common culture in which you find yourself. By doing nothing in a wilderness—wayfaring across the landscape or sitting on a secluded bench—you remain grounded in the environment but freed from the demands to conform. And then you can ask yourself what is your purpose in life. I don’t believe in telling myself what’s important to me; for that would imply the superiority of mind and will. There’s another voice, much more interesting and that’s the one which gets an airing here.

*******

The other day I met an old pal in town, perhaps the only man in this valley roaming the street with Buddhist enlightenment on his mind. But suppose Buddhsim is an out-of-date approximation? Suppose enlightenment (if there is such a thing, which I doubt) is a “descent” to animal nature, rather than an ascent from the physical into nirvana? The Tao te Ching hints this. Religions have tried to embellish their cause by maligning the animals, but they have disfigured it instead. Animals have a natural dignity to which homo sapiens can only aspire.

*******

BBC Radio 4 has been commemorating the first men on the moon with a series of programmes, including one by novelist Jeannette Winterson called The Inconstant Moon, which mingled the tale of the NASA mission with myths and imaginings. I felt these are two different topics. Despite what simple minds believe, outer and inner reality don’t ever have to meet. The American mission, with Armstrong and Aldrin actually moon-walking, seemed to trample on the collective unconscious. No wonder there are those who still insist it was an elaborate hoax.

The vast realm of imagination, woven over millennia by solitary seers and whole societies, has little effect unless it’s seen as part of external reality. The moment you acknowledge that it’s fiction, it becomes limp and pointless. Secular Western society makes a clear distinction between art (novels for example) and what it calls “superstitions”.

Doctor: I don’t know what’s wrong with you so I’m going to give you this sugar-pill to take twice a day. It’s known in the trade as a placebo.

That would hardly work. The illusion has to be elaborated and respected. Well, perhaps not much: the other day the doctor sent me to have a swollen toe x-rayed. I’ve found it less painful since then, almost forgotten about it, in fact. My mind and body have an understanding between them. Pain is the messenger, consciousness is the addressee. I read the message, take the best action I can, and throw the message away, based on a trust that the doctor will contact me when he gets the x-ray results.

All this goes some way towards explaining religion.

Laughing water

I drafted this article five years ago and two years later promised a post on the topic:

“I will some time tell here the story of my visit to the Mustardseed community in Jamaica, where I encountered a shining human being. Aged 21, she had been severely brain-damaged from birth and in consequence was no taller than a three-year old. She could not speak, she could not feed herself. Her twisted limbs were stick-like and useless. She could not sit up. She even had to be turned over on her daybed from time to time to avoid bedsores. But she could laugh more beautifully than anyone I have met. Adorned by her carers with makeup and braided hair, she directed a regal glance at me. I felt in the presence of a superior soul.”

It’s time I told the whole story.

* * * * * * * *

“In my father’s house are many mansions,” said Jesus according to St John’s gospel. I have been to one of them—“My Father’s House” in Mahoe Drive, off the Spanish Town Road. It’s a rough area, though I can’t say how rough, seeing only the evidence of poverty and devastation as I pass through swiftly in a taxi. We reach a pair of gates ten foot high, solid iron, bulletproof. There’s a small peephole, through which a Rastafarian gatekeeper scrutinises all would-be visitors, before pulling back the doors and granting you entrance to this Heaven-haven. Something saturates the air, at any rate I feel it strongly. I’m not talking of the relative well-being and good order compared with the desolation outside the gate. I mean there’s a kind of pervading love—not that the territory outside was hateful. On the contrary, huge amateur efforts had been poured on to that desolation in the form of murals and inspirational graffiti, improvised structures. But there was still a sense of stigma and lack of escape routes, where the only choices were despair, crime or Rastafari.

At the end of my second visit, my regular taxi-driver came to pick me up. He was shaken, could talk of one thing only. Outside those gates, waiting for them to be opened, he’d been held up by gunmen, one each side. I always had difficulty understanding his patois, but I got it eventually. He was telling me that he’d been held up before, more than once, and had managed to talk his way out of the situation; but never with two guns, one at each side of his taxi. The worst of it was, the gates didn’t open till the gangsters left, for the loyal gatekeeper refused to put his precious flock at risk. And that was the last time my taxi-driver, Stafford, consented to go to that destination.

First visit

I’ve undergone two interviews offering myself as a volunteer and now finally I get to see the children. I wonder how I can possibly help them. They are eager but unco-ordinated. Perhaps I can read them a story? The staff have no book to offer me except one about Jesus. It’s a Catholic mission and I have no religion, but it doesn’t bother me and I feel I can use it, for in this place they must already know something of Jesus, if the concept has any meaning for them. We never reach the end of this little book because it’s time to go to chapel.

This is a circular paved area with a beautifully-constructed wooden roof for shade, but no walls, except for glass blocks round the back of the altar. It takes as long for the congregation to assemble as for the service itself. The children who can walk arrive first, and bang tambourines tirelessly, followed at intervals by children in many shapes and sizes of custom-built wheelchairs, pushed mainly by uniformed carers. Some sit, some lie prone, some look round delightedly, some are hardly conscious of their changed surroundings. Some have cloths tied round one or both hands to stop them hurting themselves; and some have an arm strapped to the wheelchair. The limbs of these non-walking children are mostly stick-like. Their muscles have not developed. Their knees and other joints are big but the rest is skin and bone, like children in famine-stricken areas. One boy—perhaps a young man—gracefully propels himself to his seat on a specially padded skateboard, his legs being withered and folded up under him, so that he appears to have none.

When we are ready to start, two of the carers retrieve the tambourines and we start to sing various catchy rhythmical hymns. We recite the Lord’s Prayer twice in all and one middle-aged lady---I gather she is a regular volunteer---exhorts the carers to join in her vigorous repetition of Hail Marys.

One girl lies helpless on pillows and seemingly unable to move. Of all the varied humanity here, her limbs are the most twisted. Her wrists are bent double, her arms and legs an indistinguishable tangle. The “Hail Mary” lady bends over and whispers some secret to the girl. I hear the loud response: musical laughter, ending in naughty giggles. I shall call the girl “Laughing Water”.

She is not the only one to give expression to spontaneous joy. A boy who dribbles continuously from his open mouth (many of the most disabled have wide-open mouths) smiles, laughs and sings praises, so to speak, very frequently. Others make odd noises of various kinds.

There are so many kinds of disability. Many of the children reach out to me, with words, with eyes, with holding hands, or in one case with sitting on my lap and hugging.

I have no problem with the religion. Whether or not it makes sense to the residents, it’s patently a comfort to the staff, reminds them why they are here, shares the burden of responsibility with an Almighty who has caused his creatures to take such diverse forms. The Chapel assembly is like the gathering of different species around a watering-hole in the desert, united in purpose and gratitude. No one tries to disrupt, everyone responds positively in some way. Even the fidgeting and fooling, when it occurs, is part of the worship, or so it seems to me. Perhaps I am just sentimental, and why shouldn’t I be?

When I get back, the dormitory where I was reading to a group is having its floor washed: there was some “accident”, I think. So I go to sit with the most disabled boys, who are still in the customized wheelchairs in which they have been wheeled to chapel. My role now is to give drinks to a couple of them. They cannot hold their own cups. I wonder what would have happened if the Mustardseed community did not exist. Despite my best efforts, I can’t stop most of the drink from spilling on to the towel tied round a boy’s neck, and soaking his lap. I feel as helpless as he, look mutely into his uncomprehending eyes to say “sorry”.

My visit lasts a mere two hours, hardly enough to glimpse the labour of giving them clean clothes, managing the excretions, washing, feeding, dealing with pain and crises and who knows what night terrors or medical emergencies. Amongst the more ambulant children, behavioural problems will have to be dealt with too. The worst I saw was one or two children pushing others out of the way; in each case it appeared to be a jealous reaction to another child getting more attention. Would any of these children ever experience a real parent, exclusive attention? But their carers are devoted, and volunteers come from far to rejoice in the simplicities of life with them. I understand they were abandoned by parents, unable to cope with a child’s disability on top of living in poverty in a slum.

People might say “If there is a God, how can he allow such suffering in the world, for example that of innocent children, born deformed and retarded?” People have a horror (sometimes expressed in a lurid fascination) of such “imperfections”. Or perhaps in a careless substitute for compassion, they would wish to eliminate such births through abortion or other eugenic procedures. I suppose for every child I saw cared-for in Mustardseed, there may be thousands elsewhere in the world with similar afflictions, but illtreated.

At least it is consistent that Catholics, who frown on abortion and contraception, should have amongst their numbers those who find a vocation in caring for unwanted children.

Second visit

It was a week before I went back to Mustardseed. I had thought of taking a more congenial storybook with me, but reflected that most of them didn’t have much language. Suppose I just came with pictures, could we extemporise from them in some way? What kind of pictures? As I had no book, I decided I would hand out pictures, and then had the idea of making masks which they could wear. I got hold of some very colourful masks (some I designed, some I bought as “clip art” from the Internet), as well as pictures of angels and various animals. All were in a modern African style, full of the most exciting colours and patterns, so that even if a child did not know the animal, or even have much idea of animals, the colours and shapes would be interesting. Due to my own disability and relative poverty, I was stuck in a small apartment and in need of some creative project, some good cause, to devote my energies to.

I printed the pictures on our computer and then K took them to work and had them laminated at the University Library. I cut out the masks and other shapes. Altogether it cost a bit but the children loved them. Despite the lamination, the masks did not last long! They were chewed and torn, the elastic broken. My week’s labour provided an hour’s entertainment, but that’s the way it goes, whether you prepare a training course or an act on the stage.

Whilst I was there, a bunch of white American teenagers from Atlanta came through and spent a while with the children. They had been spending the week with Mustardseed. Many had come on previous summers, it was a regular sponsorship by their school. One resident, who has long arms, useless legs and severe spinal curvature (the one who sits on the skateboard to get around), posed brilliantly for their photographs, with his arm round one of the prettiest girls. Then one of the American boys pretended to arm-wrestle with him.

I never saw any distress amongst the children. This time I had the chance to spend quite a while asking questions of the carers. I could see how dedicated they are to the children, whom they treat as if they were their own. One said she continues to think about them when she is off-duty. The work is split into two shifts, 8am-5pm and 5pm-8am.

I spent a while with the severely brain-damaged girls. They never grow to normal size. None of these girls living in this room can even sit up. At night they lie in cots, in the day they are placed together on day-beds. Though their limbs usually can move a bit, it may be involuntary and they cannot turn themselves over, so even this has to be done for them, to prevent bedsores. One child, who appeared asleep the whole time I was there, is unable to swallow, and receives nutrition through a tube that goes into her abdomen. Another has hydrocephalus.

I fed one of the girls in her wheelchair. A carer showed me how to spoon the rice and chicken into her mouth, but being very sensitive to her response, I concluded she was not very hungry, and we did not get far. So then the carer came back and shovelled it all into her without any trouble. I conclude that when I was trying to feed her she was more interested in, shall we say, “flirting” than eating.

One young lady is 21 and has a regal presence, despite being the size of a skeletal three-year-old, with daunting deformities. She’s the one I called Laughing Water when writing up my first visit. She lay on her day-bed returning my gaze defiantly, putting me in my place with her stare. I have wondered about her many times since: what soul is there, what intelligence, what passion, what laughter. She was elegant with braided hair, lipstick and other makeup. Her portion in life was not victimhood, but grace and dignity.

Thus the youthful Hiawatha
Said within himself and pondered,
Much perplexed by various feelings,
Listless, longing, hoping, fearing,
Dreaming still of Minnehaha,
Of the lovely Laughing Water ...            (Longfellow)

What I want to see in the world

Mahatma Gandhi tells me I must be the change I want to see in the world. He didn’t say this lightly: you only have to look at his life to see he was deadly serious. Nor do I argue with him, though till now I haven’t bothered myself with consciously wanting any change in the world. It is too complex for me to impose my limited understanding upon it. Conscious of unintended consequences, I’m a bit shy of imposing will or interpretation on anything, preferring to trust my own instinctive nature and use intellect in a subordinate role only. I have seen myself as “an animal” and “part of the Universe” and for the rest have allowed the accretions of learned ideas and beliefs to slip from me, leaving only those which seem innate.

When I compose one of these posts in its final shape, having brooded on it for days, I sit at my desk overlooking the backyard, and whenever I turn my attention away from the screen, which is probably eighty percent of the time, I observe the wild creatures about their business. Today a blackbird is helping itself to the last of the cherries on my little tree which has fruited for the first time this year. What do I want to see in the world? I want it to flourish like my own tiny backyard, in which flowers, vegetables, fruit, lawn, pests, cats, birds and insects coexist in harmony, or at least interact in time-honoured ways. I like to try and enter their worlds of perception, even working out why a snail takes the trouble to crawl up the side of this two-storey house to the eaves and back down again. At first I thought it must be disappointed by its labours, wanting to see something in the world which it could not find, but now I don’t think so. [That's another story! - Ed]

What Mahatma Gandhi wanted to see was an India no longer subservient to Britain. Indians should wear their own homespun cloth, so he led by example, going around like a “half-naked fakir” (in Churchill’s words) even when attending a political conference in London; and spinning cotton himself. His last granddaughter, Tara (Mrs Mrs Bhattacharya) says:

“The creators of this supreme handicraft are the spinners and the weavers. Khadi [traditional hand-spun cotton] can not survive without the welfare of these artists. … Even when we do not have the need for hand spinning as a source of livelihood, it is a great mental therapy and creative outlet. It has a universal appeal and its creative force will bring people together against violence and divisions. Hand spinning should be introduced in schools and colleges and clubs and hobby programmes.”

Well, I do lots of things with my hands. But what do I want to see? Freedom, justice, democracy, God’s kingdom on earth, or a more harmonious relation with the beating heart of this planet, to prolong its health? These things don’t quite move me. I see in them a confrontational political agenda, arming itself with aggressive words, supported by bombs, to condemn (or “liberate”) the unfree, unjust, undemocratic or godless.

Less controversially, more insidiously, the West has in two centuries crafted its most potent graven image: Efficiency. The ruling Powers present it before us as the Almighty and Inevitable, demanding our worship and sacrifice. We are to give up our lives in its service and receive in return Comfort and Leisure, things we might have had in the first place had we not sacrificed them. I’ve been powerless against this god, though personally I’m able to choose the slow meandering path instead of the highway, now that I am retired; but I’ve been powerless to find words to denounce Efficiency. Till now.

Some time in the last couple of weeks, I don’t know when because it was no sudden revelation but the flowering into words of something subterranean in me, I thought of Grace and Dignity. These are my answer to the question “what do you want to see in the world?” and therefore, by Gandhi’s formula, are what I must henceforth strive to embody in my own life. Grace and Dignity, not efficiency, must shape the pattern of my life and the world’s too, if I can have any influence.

Actually I have not been striving at all, just sometimes thinking about these exquisite endowments—what they represent. They are the last refuge of the poor and oppressed. But in the rich, powerful and talented they are the crowning glory.

I know others perceive the world in terms of good and evil, virtue and sin; I know, without understanding. I see things more in aesthetic terms. I know that Grace and Dignity, like all matters of taste, exist in the eye of the beholder. Before that, they take birth in the creative genius of the creature, whether snail or human makes no difference; except that we humans have been given this special blessing, that we have to work on being graceful where the snail performs it naturally.

I have not being trying to put more grace and dignity in my life, but only to see these endowments in members of my species. Nevertheless the effect on my life has been magical. I’ve felt closer to people, and they in turn, I’m sure, have felt closer to me. A barrier has dropped. I was like Harry Haller in the first part of Hesse’s book, The Steppenwolf. And now it’s as if I move forward to the second part of the book, consorting with my new-found friends Hermine and Pablo; learning to touch new forms of life, new joys; and be transformed.

--------------

Note: I couldn’t find an illustration adequate to the theme, so I’ve taken the Chinese characters for the Tao.

Risk assessment

There is more to being a business consultant than leaving a trail of half-full coffee cups across your client’s office, marking the desks you have visited in the course of your investigations. Your notes also have to be written up into a report revealing valuable insights which, convention has it, your client’s staff could not have achieved by themselves.

My task was to carry out a Risk Assessment. My senior deemed me competent because I’d written a software package designed to process data for that very purpose. But I was a beginner at knowing how to use it in real life. Health and Safety, Political Correctness and Risk Assessment have this in common, that I never encountered them in my formative years. In those good old days we had to manage with common sense, tact and seat-of-the-pants.

In one of my coffee-leaving desk-meetings, I made a note of the term “VPN”; decided not to reveal ignorance by asking what it was. My informant assumed I was more knowledgeable than he, and I hated to disappoint him. It was only later, deciphering my notes at home, that I faced assessing the risk, if any, of using a VPN. It stands for Virtual Private Network, which I vaguely knew already—Public? Private?—probably one or the other. This didn’t quite explain what a VPN is, but had I asked, would I have understood the answer?

After my nine-hours-without-a-break at the client’s head office (mentioned in this post), I was to do my write-up in the comfort of my own home, “at leisure”, so to speak. The task was to identify potential threats, quantify them and multiply by vulnerability and impact, arriving at a number representing the risk. Is that clear? It wasn’t to me.

I wrestled with my task to no avail. What does a man do if at first he doesn’t succeed? Walk away and find something easier, to heal his wounded pride. A beer? No good: my brain would get even more confused. I needed a displacement activity, something to yield a quick win and restore my self-respect.

*****

There’s a door in my house, unbalanced on its hinges. When you leave it ajar it likes to slam shut, rattling its glass unpleasantly. I’d often thought of fixing it but it seemed too tedious a task. Now suddenly it seemed like a good idea, something that ought to be done today! I’d have the satisfaction of a good job well done, to put me in the frame of mind to go back to my study and tackle the risk assessment.

Doors are heavy, but taking them off isn’t hard—you just unscrew the hinges. It’s not even hard to rebalance them. You just drill new holes for the screws. I admit it takes a little thought to establish where those new holes need to be, but I’ve done it before. The hard part is to put the door back on. It’s especially hard without an assistant. My impulse to do the job now defied all reason.

Once detached from the frame, the door had to be raised with wedges till its hinges were the right height and angle for inserting the first screws. I’d got it so near, just a little bit more needed, when I lost control and the door slipped through my fingers by its own weight, landing on the television, DVD player, satellite box and potted plant, all of which stood on a three-legged table. I saw the gravity of the situation as gravity had its way and everything got knocked over.

* * * *

My colourful language at such junctures is a kind of prayer to the Universe, helpful I like to think in minimising the effect of disasters I unleash upon myself. Would the glass door be smashed, the electronic items fail due to internal injuries, the pot plant die of shame and grief? It’s a miracle, but nothing worse happened than disarray and dirt on the carpet. I botch-fixed the door back on. It’s marginally better-balanced than it was to start with. To my gratitude (and this is a gratitude journal after all) everything still works.

Had I performed formal risk analysis on my alleged “displacement activity”, I would have established the following.

Threat of door falling over: it’s too heavy to balance with one hand, top score.
Vulnerability of household items to this threat: they’re right next to the door, top score.
Impact: they’ll all be smashed, including the door-glass, top score.
Multiply together for Risk and you get: “Are you crazy? Don’t do it alone”.

Thus did the Universe in its wisdom give me blessing. I walked away in despair from a Risk Assessment, and it gave me an instant training exercise in that very topic.

Pearly gate

I had intended to take my well-trodden valley path, a fruitful place for broodings which I’ve several times captured and preserved by posting them on this blog. But a different plan revealed itself as I progressed. The first leg was walking with K to her work at the hospital, about a mile away. After we said goodbye I passed through the back gate on to the main road down the hill. At the front of Maternity stands an old boundary wall. It’s not pretty but seemed to glow with meaning, as if I suddenly discovered a different way of seeing. Sometimes it happens the moment I walk out of the house, and I used to think it was the ultraviolet rays, the birdsong, the fresh air or the clouds. There's nothing more ordinary than a dull grey wall. It was just a matter of getting on the right wavelength and it happened in that moment. Suddenly I thought of shamanism and the special kind of seeing taught to Carlos Castaneda by his mentor Don Juan; I decided to go where my feet and eyes led me, not a predetermined trail. I was carrying a map but used it only to avoid getting lost. How could it guide me where to go? I've stopped believing in guides. I have to journey alone.

I’m walking up a hill now, cheap housing above me on the right, thickets in a kind of ravine on the left, where I stand above the broken roofs of old sheds. I want to explore them, crawl through this convenient hole in the fence, clinging to branches as I descend, to discover what these sheds were once used for, and see if any treasures remain. I resist the urge, reflecting that I’m half a century too old to be doing that.

I continue through a wide expanse of rough-cut grass: it’s the common land adjoining the estate of council flats, a place for children to have adventures, though deserted at present. A child’s homework diary has been torn from its loose-leaf binding, its pages now wind-blown over a wide area. I pick up one or two for close examination. Archaeology fascinates me, it doesn’t matter how recent the artefacts. There are notes from teacher to parent; from mother to teacher; from pupil to self. There’s an appointment to see a welfare officer, and a note from the officer apologising for keeping the boy late.

I mentally compose some anthropological notes: In this ravaged landscape I have found a valuable picture of life in the year 2009: how tribe members worked communally to impart traditional lore to their young, sending messages with coded squiggles using various dyes marked on sheets fashioned from wood-pulp. Do not imagine the homo sapiens of Britain to have been crass and ignorant, for these well-preserved “Homework Pages” provide convincing evidence of a fascinating culture. One might almost call it advanced.

I’m in the mood to notice everything: expressions on the faces of dog-walkers and their dogs; litter—sometimes dismembered toys, but mostly snack-wrappers, cans, plastic bottles. From which we can deduce much about twenty-first century diet and the social norms of their civilization.

I pass Hillary Road, where twenty years ago, I had the intuition that my father (whom I had never known, or even known about) was still alive; started trying to find him; and succeeded. Whereby hangs a different tale. A mile or so later, I enter King’s Wood, about which I wrote three years ago. Police conducted an elaborate search over several weeks for bomb-making materials. They were tipped off about a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners. The Wood shows no sign of this activity. It’s so litter-free that I take great care to hide my banana-skin after stopping for a snack there.

After an hour and a half of vigorous walking, I get my “second wind”: an interesting phenomenon written up in Wikipedia. They don’t have a definitive explanation, I'm glad to say: I prefer mysteries. I get into an easy rhythm, I feel I could walk all day, and was born to walk. In fact I was, it's a gift of evolution, or if you prefer, of God—via evolution. I might be a descendant of Ötzi the Iceman from 3300 BC. “By examining the proportions of Ötzi's tibia, femur and pelvis, Christopher Ruff has determined that Ötzi's lifestyle included long walks over hilly terrain.” (Wikipedia). I enjoy walking for five hours at a stretch, but hate to sit down at a desk for more than an hour. [Subconsciously, I’ve colluded in making my desk uncomfortable: the sharp table-edge almost cuts my forearms as I type; my bottom aches on the plain wooden chair.}

What happened at the grey wall, when it seemed to transform into the pearly gates of Heaven? Wayfaring is my meditation. When I leave the house and walk alone, I turn my back on “cares”, and open myself to membership of the “All”, the Universe. It doesn’t need pretty scenery, so long as I allow sensual inputs from all around to stream into my consciousness. Not just those from all around but those from my own body too—bones, flesh, guts; whether my legs feel heavy; feeling hot or cold; sweat, pain or fatigue; insect bites, grazes, aching joints. In short, whatever happens, saying “Yes!” to it.

I don’t want to say that wayfaring is a method to achieve something. Does it need to be mapped? Maps are good to prevent getting lost, that’s all. They can’t tell you where to go.

Here in the stillness of these woods, with birds echoing across the clearings and strange sounds—clickings, creakings—I pick up quite a different sense of what it is to be human. A sense that links to dim memories of the past, and not just early childhood. It’s a good feeling, that’s all I can say. In writing, I try to be a voice where there is only silence from the others I encounter, or might have, centuries ago: joggers, workers, peasants, dog walkers, everyone who follows paths in wild places like our ancestors the hunters, or Ötzi the iceman; those who touch Nature and let themselves be subsumed in it; yet don’t have the words. I don’t really have words either. They have to be invented.

There are enough books, I don’t want to compete, but just give a taste of what it is like to be an ordinary person. And you may ask why, because ordinary persons know already what it is like. Ah, but this other evolutionary gift, this organ called the imaginative mind, gets in the way, allowing us to deceive ourselves, adapt to inhuman ways, deny the facts of our evolution. It’s tempting to follow the fake culture and forget deeper knowledge.

I write to remind and undeceive. That is what impels me to write about ordinary things. Here on this last day of June, in the shade of this footpath which cuts through another estate of cheap houses like a sharp knife (it was here before the houses and is protected by law), I feel enormous privilege. I came with no purpose but gratitude for the gift of legs. I don’t know what else to say. This is life and I am glad to be part of it.