Friday, March 18, 2011

Dear Maud,

Mother Nature is adept at dispersal.

Every morning, Maud, I take two beagles and a baby (of whom more anon!) for a walk, a restorative ramble-cum-toilsome trudge along ‘street and lane’, across playground and park.

On Tuesday, while traversing the latter, I spotted, on a grassy slope, a scatter of little white lumps, like mushrooms in a meadow. Alas, it was foam not fungi.

Egad, I thought, and traipsed on.

By today, however, the rash had cleared; gust by thrusting gust, Mummy Nature had worked her magic!

Which got me thinking, of course.

How often we are hemmed in by thoughts or clouded in doubts! Like cells, our notions seem to divide and multiply, as if simply to subsume us.

For I, like you, am hounded by a sole concern: to be at one – with myself and the world. To unify, no less, my various ‘parts’: the incipient Catholic and novitiate cook; the tentative handyman and would-be poet; the fitful gardener and striving father; the zealous student and reluctant clerk.

Certainly, the way I cannot see clear.

Here, then, is the answer.

Open your mind, my friend. Walk afield, your eyes and ears ajar. Zephuros will take care of the rest.

Some days, though, we need the human touch – like that of the gruff Englishman who haunts my streets.

‘Take it easy, boy,’ he says, as if sensing my despair. ‘One step at a time.’

It’s a breeze when you know how!

Yours etc.

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