To a nephew

Afam is my nephew by marriage, nearly 15, and goes to a good school where good money must be paid for the education provided. So I was asking him about that, and he told me his vocabulary had become somewhat depleted. He didn’t actually use the word “depleted”.. He explained that in earlier years he used to read voraciously (not that he used that word either). And then, as if to prove his point, he retired abruptly from this highbrow conversation with his uncle, to resume the computer game which he had graciously paused. I observed dwarfish warriors scuttling round the battlements of a vast castle, garishly coloured, which revolved in accordance with the action, attempting unsuccessfully to obey the laws of perspective.

I was not ready to give up on Afam. I don’t like to see early promise dashed by teenage indolence. I suggested that if he desired to replenish his vocabulary, he might like to look at my blog. “Oh! You have a blog?”—expressing amazement that an earlier generation could indulge in something so up-to-date.

Accordingly, he cast his gaze on my previous post, “Wayfaring Again”, and absorbed its gist to the extent of his attention-span, by speed-reading the first third of the text. I was impressed by his immediate critique, that it was all wonderfully philosophical and would be fine in a book; but that in a blog it lacked credibility, specifically its pretence that the words were dictated into a voice-recorder during my alleged aimless wanderings. In point of fact, Afam, they were so dictated, though naturally edited later. But I felt that your criticism, which I may not have done justice to here, got to the heart of the matter, and reflected my original doubts whether to publish that post at all.

So I want to get to the point more snappily today, whether or not Afam becomes my regular reader. I doubt he will ever return, but what do I know?

All that I ever have to say is dictated by the moment: especially by the sunshine, or sometimes the stillness of the night. There are certain sacred spots too, in which for a minute or several, I’m captivated. There is a spot in the kitchen—I could mark it with an X on the floor. It’s where I stand to hang up clean utensils on a row of hooks, or return spices to their place on the shelf. It’s as if the kitchen cracks open to reveal a magical landscape, reminding me of a place somehow beyond memory, perhaps beyond this external world.

Another such spot is the backyard when I hang out washing on the line, especially on a Sunday morning, especially on this day, March 21st. A pregnant hush hangs in the fresh clear air. The sun has reached the upper part of the east-facing fence, high enough to warm the sheets when I hoist up the line with its wooden prop. These spots are aspects of Home which I’ve designed and built, in harmony with their environment. If men and women are to flourish in sane living, it’s vital to maintain a grasp on that harmony with Nature, as enjoyed by our hunting and agrarian ancestors.

Despite a harsh winter, everything I planted is coming up in this tiny backyard: well, almost everything. I rescue a worm from a concrete path that I’m sweeping. I marvel at its ability to move in either direction, as if it had a head at each end; at the delicate vein visible through its transparent skin; at the way it burrows eagerly back into the soil. The worm is a success story of Nature. I hope I will learn to do as well. Somewhere overhead, a group of wheeling gulls stridently repeat some anecdote, or excitedly plan some bold exploit—I can’t decide which. There’s a faint roar far up in the heavens. Logically, it must be connected with an elongating vapour-trail that something is writing on the blue sky.

There’s another way to distil the inspiration, and periodically I give it a shot: to pen the whole piece in a single session, driven by the moment’s intensity. Oh, And Afam, never mind that you have eschewed leisure-time reading in favour of computer games. If you ever read this post, and get this far down it, I want to tell you I’m grateful for your insights.