Useful Irrelevance and Senseless Death.

It’s interesting how the mind has a way of deflecting you from a course of action that would be ill advised. There you are burning with a wild, hot rage, or freezing in the visceral chill of high anxiety, or languishing in the dark pit of depression, considering whether suicide or homicide would be the better option since there appears to be no other solution (and you know you’ve come perilously close to both on at least one occasion in your life.) Suddenly an incongruent thought breaks upon you and demands attention:

I wonder how many boys and men there are in the world called Harry Potter, and how awful it must be for them.

I was ironing shirts at the time.

*  *  *

Yesterday I received some crushing financial news from a bureaucratic organisation. It seems I’m going to be even poorer than I anticipated and I wasn’t happy, so I went for a short walk to try and shake it off. I reached the wood at the top of the lane and stood aside to let a vehicle have the road unhindered. When the car had passed I looked down at my feet and saw that I was standing next to a squirrel lying on his stomach with his head resting on a branch, as though in sleep. His right paw was clutching the same branch and his eyes were open. His bushy tail stretched out behind him and he was completely unmarked. He was utterly beautiful and quite dead. I suppose he’d been hit by a car but not mangled as road kills usually are. I asked the question:

‘Why do you show me this when I’m feeling the way I do?’

I received no answer, and I’ve no idea to whom the question was addressed.