My days always seemed to start with one intention and end with something entirely different – a diversion from what my habitual yet fallible mind decreed. We are told to have a plan, write things down, get sorted. As if we are all filing cabinets filled with neat and orderly folders!
We pit ourselves against others who seem to have it sorted and think that must be the way to go. Yet this is the dichotomy that’s puzzled me all my life. When I am in freefall, when I step outside the kaleidoscope of patterned thinking, as on my walks, simply doing what comes next, or as the song goes, doing a what comes naturally (!), there is no policeman directing the traffic of thoughts in my head. No collisions. Just a steady stream.
Yet there does need to be some order in my world. Hanging about mooning over natural wonders all day does not feed my body – aside from the occasional wild garlic or nettle soup!
But this collective situation, this radical shift from a habitual modus operandi, has enabled me to make peace with my dichotomy. I have discovered, quite accidentally, how to merge the two lanes of my existence seamlessly, if I don’t treat them as separate in the first place. Nature is still my soul fodder but equally the same sense of harmony is to be found in the more practical deeds of the day.
Nothing is taken for granted.
My last couple of walks have been about noticing the manmade that harmoniously lives side by side with nature.
The smoke from the garden bonfire next to the park hanging round the trees; the engine red iron post at the end of the soft stone wall of the arch; the Road sign nestling in the hedge and the houses in London Road glancing through the sober trees in Gensing Gardens.
Seamless coexistence.
