TheBanyanTree: It all happened so fast

[John Bailey]

Wednesday August 27, 2003

IT ALL HAPPENED SO FAST

Stuff happened today. It's all routine, all noted in my daybook, and much 
if not all of it has happened before.

We went to Travesty & Picknose to order the materials for the new pergola 
and from thence to the supermarket where I did a most unsatisfactory 
grocery and provisioning pass, ending with a bill that seems to be almost 
twice what it should be. Graham did a last pass at the plantings in the 
back garden and I read a mix of poetry and Harry Potter. There are times 
when the difference between poetry and Harry Potter are of little 
significance. The evening ended with two glasses of wine and frequent trips 
out into the semi-dark of a suburban evening to attempt a sighting of Mars. 
Unsuccessful -- instead of bringing war, Mars brought a high level, 
light-catching haze.  War gods are not supposed to be shy but perhaps in 
these days of doubt and suspicion of the reasons for war, they are indeed 
become retiring creatures. That would be good.

And I find nothing at all in the day on which to focus, leave alone work up 
into a readable summary. It doesn't matter, of course. Just recording the 
facts is enough. The fancies may come later:

         Nov. 12 1837.  I yet lack discernment to distinguish the whole lesson
         of to-day; but it is not lost ,-- it will come to me at last. My 
desire
         is to know what I have lived, that I may know how to live henceforth.

                                                 --H.D. Thoreau, Journal

There were lighter moments, including a classic Christmas cracker joke:

         There was this snail, gets mugged by a tortoise. On investigating,
         the policeman asks: "Would you recognise him if you saw him again?"
         The snail replies:  "I don't know. It all happened so fast."

There is a moral to the combinations of the day, of course, and it's hidden 
away in that delicious little joke as much as in Thoreau's literary genius. 
If you don't carefully examine your life as it goes along, and record it, 
when you come to the final balancing and investigation, all you'll have to 
say is "I don't know. It all happened so fast."

--
John Bailey   Carmarthenshire, Wales
journal of a writing man
<http://www.oldgreypoet.com>