Reflecting on Very Little.

I keep looking for an email but it hasn’t arrived yet. I’m not sure why I keep looking for it. Is it because the sender is important to me and I will derive some benefit from the correspondence, or is it simply that I crave the ego boost of having someone recognise my presence in their world? It’s a sad suspicion that the latter is probably more typical of me than the former, but in this case I really don’t know.

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I’ve just been wiling away a little time reading some of Paul Auster’s short novel, The Locked Room. He’s a hell of a writer, you know. Sometimes he reminds me of me in both style and substance, but he goes much deeper into the substructure of life than I do. I’m too lazy for that, preferring to hint briefly at what I see beneath the surface rather than making the effort to offer a comprehensive view. But at least I understand him, which makes the reading relatively easy. 

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And today I walked one of the circuits of lanes in these parts for the first time in a year and a half. It only amounts to about two miles, but when you think that I couldn’t manage even half a mile before the procedure, it was rather pleasant to be able to do the whole thing with no need of rests and nothing worse than very minor discomfort. And it was good to see the old views again and re-acquaint myself with some of my tree friends, many of whom are now in the early stages of their autumn livery.

The walk brought me back along Church Lane and I half-hoped that I would see the sun come out as I occasionally did in the earlier years of my Shire rambling. I didn’t, of course, because the person who used to draw the clouds aside now lives in a different world and probably never walks along Church Lane. And it’s a world in which I no longer have even a small place anyway. Maybe that’s why I keep looking for an email which hasn’t arrived yet.