On Emptiness and Patience.

The last post I made was one of my poorest. It was so badly written that it was beyond editing and I thought I should take it down. But then I decided to take Omar Kayyam’s moving finger literally and let it stand as testament to an imperfect being.

There’s a darkness inside me at the moment. It’s a grey, foggy sort of darkness which hangs silent and impotent in a void of its own making. Emptiness does not suit the living being. Emptiness is symptomatic of the dying time when the frigid air is filled with nothing but unreal images of times past going round and round on a wheel in the mind’s eye. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the nature of man is no exception.

A vacuum needs to be filled with life-giving air and energy – the fresh new growth of spring, the balmy breezes, the strength of a waxing sun, the scent of new-mown hay drifting off the field. The problem is that you cannot force the progress of spring. Though driven by an irresistible imperative, she’s young and fickle of purpose; she comes when she’s ready.

And that’s what this year’s Midwinter Festival has felt like: trudging without vigour through a dismal wood with only sleeping, skeletal trees for company, waiting for something or someone draped in colour, light and adventure to walk around the next bend so I can say: ‘May I walk with you for a while?’ I’ve been here before.