Friday 2 October 2020

The Question of Mystery and Imagination.

You know, blogging can become an addiction. I’ve been scribbling notes to this one for over ten years, and now I get restless, even a little fretful, if I can’t think of anything to write about.

I was feeling that way earlier, and then I chanced upon an old post on which the lady from India, Dominique, had left a couple of comments. You might remember Dominique; she’s the one whose mode of written expression seemed to carry her presence into the room. It seemed to have some mysterious power to convey her energies into my private space.

Tonight it went a stage further: I heard her voice quite clearly in my mind. It was a quiet, feminine voice, but it had an edge to it like vibrating glass. And the accent sang slightly, conveyed with the kind of expressiveness unique to Indians who speak perfect English with the lilt of the sub-continent.

And so I’m naturally curious to know what this means. I’ve never met Dominique; I don’t know what she looks like, how she spends her days, or how old she is. But do I now know what she sounds like? Probably not. I expect it’s all just the meanderings of what passes for an imagination.

Or is there something real going on here? Life is, after all, a very strange business replete with mystery if you care to recognise it. It seems a little odd that I should suddenly feel gently and subtly haunted by a woman with whom I exchanged only a few brief words seven or eight years ago. And further, I wonder whether there might be a connection with the mysterious behaviour of the Filipina nurse which captured my attention so strongly in hospital. I’ve even wondered whether they might both be unwitting messengers of some kind. 

Ah, well. I don’t suppose I shall ever know. The best of mysteries have a tantalising habit of staying that way, and separating mystery from imagination is always difficult.

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Meanwhile, I’m currently watching a movie called The Last Mimzy. Mel lent it to me to help wile away an hour or so of my solitary evening lifestyle. Those evenings, now growing inexorably, can drag rather badly if there’s nothing with which to engage. It’s compelling enough so far. The plot is interesting, if not new, and the two child leads are more than adequate. And it’s reminding me again that the American work ethic seems contrived to shackle people to the shallow preoccupations of lifestyle, rather than encouraging a deeper exploration of life.

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