Pregnant thoughts

In my last I referred to my cellphone’s “voice recorder” facility.

These are the 4 discrete thoughts that I recorded, I think within a total timespan of 5 minutes.

1) The aim of my lunchtime walks is in some manner to step out of time. This aim is always achieved. The result is an experience of joy and depth of existence.
2) More and more I have only to look at a tree in order to connect to its soul. . . and whatever . . . different things, different things.
3) Oh yes! You think things cannot be said. They can be said.
4) I think the poor have always lived on a kind of riches that the rich don’t have any access to.

There was a depth in these sayings and I am not sure how to translate them into a common language for they were solitary gestures, trees fruiting in a desert.

Stepping out of time: Joy. Depth of existence. Can I explain these further? No. The most important part of the utterance: “This aim is always achieved.” That is the miracle. “Always” and “out of time” refer to the same realm.

Connecting to a tree’s soul: I didn’t just mean a tree, but also a shrub . . . It wasn’t that I could identify and choose an object (is a blade of grass an object? Or a whole lawn?) but that something identified itself to me and presented to me its soul. When I said, “and whatever”, followed by “different things, different things”, it was to acknowledge the immensity of irreducible diversity. My tree was not just an example of x: it was a particular x unlike any other x. The other day I had occasion to repost some letters to my neighbour that the postman had carelessly placed in my own letterbox. A few yards away, yet it was a completely different world, even though her flat is the mirror-image of mine. If I lived there, everything would be different! So partly what I was wanting to say is “everything is different!” in soul perception, though in a different kind of perception, one might say, “There is nothing here, nothing to engage my intellect”.

Things can be said: Who was I refuting? Who was the “you”? My imaginary interlocutor. But what is saying? I have assumed for too long that saying is declaring, defining, limiting the possibilities of reality, as in a court of law. “So you were at home at the time of the incident? Then you could not have been present at the scene of the crime and could not have known that the accused was wearing a grey hat?” But other things can be said too: things which do not tie down facts but dance before the listener as new possibilities of life.

Rich and poor: I was aware of not needing to define these terms to my own self. By poor I meant those who have just enough but not an excess. I hoped it was sufficient to suggest what kind of riches sustained the poor, without giving examples whose clutter would limit the horizon. I’ll give just one, though. Walking is a sensually rich experience. Travelling by car is like being imprisoned in a tiny cell.