in the great carnival of events, those plane smashes, train crashes, poll upsets, pregnant pandas and politicos caught pilfering or pretending – and why am I surprised that they lie, when that’s what we always urge them to do? Better off abandoning papers and the flickering screen that bring me the news, why learn of the next turn of the wheel out of my hands, the spin and shuffle of another accident and outrage? It never seems to change things, my knowing. I begin to think it’s nothing but outright vanity or laziness my clinging to the passage of events, being curious. Better to be curious about the swans and the walk through the glade. There’s more sense there, more truth in a walk with a friend and the canopy of the sky and the water rolling by. For behind each event are other layers and motives, twists in the narrative, weighings and sortings, yearnings and hates, all the unknown forces and influences, even down to the great mysteries of whether these things are preplanned, written, or chaotic and free. But my walk by the Blenheim lake isn’t like that. Sure, there’s much hidden and designed and unknown to me in that landscape, but I’m content with the scope of my eyes. Perhaps, what you see is enough, sweet enough to knit all ravelled sleaves of care.
