This State of Independence

Five to nine in the morning. I sit in a cafe looking out of the window at the rain. A slow drizzle floats endlessly down, warm and quiet. Outside it smelt of green things and growth, inside it is coffee mixed with deodorant from the business people surrounding me. The quiet clink and hiss from the counter mixes with the surrounding conversation. They talk in upbeat words like return on investment, niche markets and publicly perceived image. I have no public image today, it is my day off, I just sit quietly and write.

For a long time now I have thought that I do not have a work ethic, that somehow I was born without that compulsory requirement to modern society. But sitting here it occurs to me that I do, it is just not the same one that I am surrounded by.

Money. As deals are made and game plans play out, the underlying theme here is money. Making money and then making more money. All of it to buy things. I don’t want things, I am as happy here with a seven dollar coffee and scone as I would be looking at a shiny new Porsche outside my house. Time is what is important to me. I work to make time to do things, not to buy things.

My whole life has been an attempt to work as little as possible to make myself as much time as possible. I might just use that time to sit and look at the rain, but to me that is what is important no matter how much of a waste it would seem to those around me if they only knew my thoughts. They might say they are working now to make money so that they will have time in the future. But who knows what the future will bring, I would rather have my time now especially as I do not believe that after a lifetime devoted to making money you can suddenly stop, retiring as it is usually called and is the death of a lot of people. No I enjoy what I have now, little as it may be it is much much more than I should think those around me have. Far from being one of life’s losers I have just realised that I am very lucky to be this way.

No wonder people think I live on a different planet . . . I do.

Life is never dull when you make time for a cup of coffee . . .

Questions

Tuesday morning, a quarter to eight. I need a car today so have dropped Nicola off to swim before work and now I am in Starbucks waiting for the shops to open at nine. It’s quiet, peaceful, grey. Distant, distracted people pass the window absorbed inside their own worlds. I am here with it all, calm, relaxed.

I think about work and the feeling changes. MY heart beats, butterflies flutter inside and I become anxious, slightly rushed, edgy . . . Why?

It could be the coffee but it’s not. I sit still but cannot pin down the cause. It could be the unknown, the uncertainty. It could be the closeness to other people, being within their personal space and mine. I am suddenly uncomfortable and cannot settle.

So I think about a couple of friends of ours, Dave and Carol. They seem to have this open calmness about them, receptive, ready to observe things, think and then act. To act without uncertainty, or to accept uncertainty as part of it all. As I picture the two of them I see myself being the same way. The butterflies suddenly multiply and swarm through me along with a voice from deep within.

“What if I am wrong? Just like I am always wrong. How will I explain that?”

“What will people say?”

“More likely they’ll say nothing won’t they? - I am not worth it, who would want to talk to me, to risk being associated with a strange one like myself?”

I stick with it and the feeling subsides to a nervous emptiness.

The feeling I have at work.

The Comfort of Rain

Unusually, it has been raining now for two days here in New Zealand, this is the third day. Approaching the hottest part of the year the sun should be shining and the ground should be baked hard and dry, brown. Instead it is raining, and the view is much more British, all green trees and fields and a grey sky.

Inside in the dry, the sound of the constant rain surrounds me. There is a constant background hiss of the rain in the trees, overlaid by the rising and falling drumming sound from the roof. The occasional dripping splash of water onto gravel from the fig trees close outside and a distant bird call evry now and then add a randomness to the whole thing that is well . . . comforting.

It is like sitting with an old friend. Someone older that has known me forever. Someone who has watched my successes and failures, who knows my good points and bad and yet accepts them all without comment or judgement. The rain and I can sit together comfortably in silence, nothing needs to be said for we both accept things as they are and as they have been without comment.

Right now, at this moment all things are as they should be.

Green

Saturday 6am

6am. The sunlight squeezed between the earth and a thick blanket of cloud just catches the treetops. The whole world is green. There is a wind too, warm and heavy with the promise of showers. Summer showers of big raindrops that briefly drench everything before turning to mist and silently return upwards and move on.

It must be 20 degrees already.

In Scotland it is 2 degrees and snowing. The world there is white.

Just lately, in the books I have read and the movies I have seen a message keeps coming across - it is all in the details but you must take a wider view of them.

There are patterns are forming.

The Hissing of the Summer Lawns

Thursday 8.45am 

It is forecast to get to 29 degrees today. Just now at a quarter to eight in the morning even though the nighttime chill still surrounds me I can feel the heat of the sun already pushing through, burning.

I am in the middle of our village, Havelock North. There is a distant hissing of water spraying the grass, the birds chirp and whistle, and the traffic quietly rumbles as everybody begins their day. As I walk past a cafe a hint of coffee fills the air along with the clinking of cups. The people are all isolated, distant, self absorbed as they think about their day ahead . . .

In the UK in the 60’s and 70’s package holidays arrived. Ordinary people could now spend two weeks a year somewhere more exotic than Aberdeen, Spain perhaps or Italy. Everything was arranged for you by the travel company, all you had to do was choose from the brochure, pay the fee, and turn up at the airport. For people like my parents who loved to travel but had decided to stay in one place for their children’s schooling, package holidays were ideal and every year my sister and I would spend two weeks by the pool or on the beach sucking in all the strange sights, sounds and tastes. We would leave Edinburgh paper white and along with the rest of our party return lobster pink, tired but inspired having had a small glimpse of what was out there in the rest of the world.

And that feeling from then of the sun already burning down through the morning cool has penetrated deep within me and stuck. It may only be like this for a brief couple of hours each day but it always evokes those childhood feelings of being on holiday, of having all the time in the world with no worries and a whole world of possibilities and new things to experience. It makes me happy.

Life is never dull when you make time for a cup of coffee and a cheese scone . . .

Morning light

Thursday 11am

Mornings and evenings, these are my favourite times of the day. Especially mornings. There is something about the light at this time that entrances me. I think it is the softness of it as the sun just comes up and gently caresses the world below, waking it tenderly as a lover or a mother would her child. It is officially Autumn here now and there is a chill in the air that makes the morning light even more special as I feel its warmth soaking into me through the cold.

Colours are different at this time as well, more saturated, more intense, but with a softness about them that is so relaxing just to gaze at. Later on the sun will be much hotter and bleach everything harshly flat and still but evening will gradually arrive as it does completing the cycle in a different but just as beautiful conclusion as it ushers in the nightfall.

Life is never dull when you can see and feel . . . .