I love the idea of miracles and wish life to be filled with them: every day an Ebenezer Scrooge transformed into a kindly old man. So I won’t stop using the word, even though some people associate it with supernatural divine intervention. No wonder, if you put it that way, that rationalists protest, “There’s no such thing as miracles”, for if they happened as often as I wish (they do! they do!) and were inexplicable except to theologians, then scientists would have to close their laboratories and be unemployed and . . . hope for a miracle!
But it isn’t like this. To me, a miracle is rapid transformation and it’s miraculous because we’re used to the rhythm of continuity. I’m used to my rut and abhor change. I’ve drawn sustenance from a daily routine of communing with Nature. Free to indulge each passing whim, I’ve not had to worry about earning a living. Work commissions and clients have come to me occasionally, without any effort on my part, so I’ve survived that way. In fact it’s been such a blessed existence that I’ve failed to detect how dependent I’ve been on contingent factors: good health, low expenses, ecstasy that seems to radiate from the open sky.
We cling to habits and fear change, but Nature has its ways to confound our sense of continuity. The caterpillar emerges from the egg and chomps greedily on the first thing it finds. Then it feels strange urges to spin itself a hammock or cocoon. Then it gives in to an overwhelming lethargy, becoming a hardened chrysalis, inert like a seed. Then in due time it wants to wake up and stretch, and feel the insect-blood rushing to its new-found legs and antennae and proboscis and unfurling iridescent wings, ready to start a new life, in which it doesn’t need to eat its own weight daily, but only sip at perfumed nectar like a party animal on cocktails in fancy glasses, and dance in the sunshine and flirt. All this in its old age.
Recently, my routines have been interrupted. Pain brought me to earth, together with a metaphorical rubbing of the eyes and waking from a beautiful dream. How could I have been sustained for a whole year in the same fashion, going out each day with camera, tripod, notebook, dictaphone—like Vincent van Gogh with his portable easel in the fields near Arles or Auvers? How could I have been nourished so royally by the scruffy streets of my home town, a solitary loafer never bored and usually inspired?
It’s changing and I’m ready. Ten years ago I left commuting and working nine-to-five and the stresses of IT projects. Some guiding hand lifted me from that routine. With excitement greater than misgivings, I’m poised to return to that pattern of life on Monday.
I went to buy shirts, needing a bigger size, my neck’s got bigger in old age. Who cares? This is my butterfly phase.
PS in October 2025 That was 18 years ago. Who was Vincent then to talk of old age?
a wayfarer’s notes 
I wish I could be as poetic in describing my experiences.
My literal descriptions lack your style and grace.
I will have to resort to my art (illustrations) as a means of communicating the beauty of my experiences.
I can only hope that my images will speak as clearly, and bring as much pleasure to the viewer as your words do here.
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Charles, your kind praise is very encouraging but it is mixed with much modesty about your own creative work! I hope you will publish images of your art because to me the most sought-after art is exactly as you describe: a means of communicating the beauty of experiences. Other kinds of art are fashionable these days!
There is a cheap art shop i go to and I have tried oil pastels, soft pastels, pencil, ink – all to try and capture the beauty of clouds. My sister says I should use water-colour, which I have been avoiding as it was what we used at school and I remember it was not as easy as it looks.
But all these are trivial variations on one medium: the art of living! It's as hard to learn as any of them, but we can “get results” very soon with our sincerity, as you have kindly done in your comments today.
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old age ??
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enjoy !!!
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i am 120 and still going strong… want to live for 300 years..
lazily of course.
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Isn't it interesting how these patterns shift? I'd become accustomed to shrugging about my “inability to get things done” (meaning more than work and school!) and yet slowly, as my stress has eased I find myself increasingly productive. Without thinking I find myself picking up things that have been sitting too long, and simply getting them done. My body was reacting to stress by insisting on rest.
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Interesting post again for me to happen upon. I find myself in a similar fashion realizing that change is upon me, and with a body that rarely cooperates with me, sometimes it can be most challenging to figure out workarounds for all that it demands of me. So I wish you luck in the new transition and transformation, and again thank you for your beautiful words and writing, which never fail to bring me a deeper point to learn from and be inspired by.
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Vincent, I once more have to say how impressed I am by your beautiful writing. It's really extraordinary, and as I wish you well in your next stage of development I hope that your new employment will make good use of your talent.
I'm sure that a pretty large group of us are waiting eagerly to hear about your first day.
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Best wishes dear Vincent for this new beginning! Your buying new clothes to wear to work – I have been in that situation too, returning to the “mainstream” after years in the wilderness, and having to get the clothes to be appropriately dressed in a new setting.
Best
rama
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