"Over the years you can come to recognize aspects and details, down to the smallest particulars, and incorporate them into a larger sense of the whole. That's really what walks are about. As well as hoovering up information, it's a way of actually shifting a state of consciousness, and you get into things you didn't know about, or you begin to find out about, and that's the interesting part. Otherwise, it's just reportage."
"And as I went, I realized that walking away is one of life's greatest pleasures, whether it's walking away from a bad job, a bad relationship, a bad educational course, or a bad psycho-geography festival (what the author was leaving)....my needs and expectations weren't their responsibility....I was too cynical, too unhip, too much of a sourpuss, a loner, a solitary walker. And perhaps it's absurd to call yourself a loner and a solitary walker when your chief walking pleasure involves exploring the streets of major metropolitan cities, but that was how I felt about New York, that it was a city crammed with solitary walkers, just like me."
Man, spring really has sprung out your way. We're going to the first of many gardens tomorrow, and I expect to stand in a drizzle and hope for flowers, instead of actually find anything other than the requisite snowdrops and crocuses that HAVE to come up -- did you know fuchsias grow wild here? Crazy. Gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteWalking is good, yes, very good.
ReplyDeleteReclining with a tray = better.
SOMETHING ON A TRAY
by Noël Coward
Advancing years may bring about
A rather sweet nostalgia
In spite of rheumatism and gout
And, certainly, neuralgia.
And so, when we have churned our way
Through luncheon and a matinée,
We gratefully to bed retire
To rest our aching, creaking vertebrae
And have a little something on a tray.
Some ageing ladies with a groan
Renounce all beauty lotions,
They dab their brows with eau-de-Cologne
And turn to their devotions,
We face the process of decay
Attired in a négligé
And with hot bottles at our toes
We cosily in bed repose
Enjoying, in a rather languid way,
A little 'eggy' something on a tray.
Advancing years that many dread
Still have their compensations,
We turn when youth and passion have fled
To more sedate sensations,
And when we've fought our weary way
Through some exhausting social day
We thankfully to bed retire
With pleasant book and crackling fire
And, like Salome in a bygone day,
Enjoy a little something on a tray.
When weary from the fray
Something on a tray
Sends weariness away,
Something on a tray,
Thank God, thank God we say,
For something on a tray.
~ from After the Ball, 1954
The book opens with a funny story of how the author, while on a flat, dry road, fell over and broke his arm in three places. He pointed out the irony of him writing this book while lounging about and healing. He would appreciate this poem!
ReplyDelete