impermanence

Urgency to live

How should we live, considering that human history–as we’ve known it so far–may be coming to an end? If the ice caps melt, if the Amazon burns, if the world becomes a hot and desperate place we will lose the narrative of progress and security upon which our choices and values are based. What is the point of our commercial and cultural endeavours when this civilisation is so far out of balance?

Impermanence is nothing new, of course, but previously it was easier to turn a blind eye to the precariousness of life. We could believe the world would always be there, much as ever it was. There have always been parents, governments, schools, employers, and advertisers who are all too ready to give us a game to play to keep us busy.… Continue reading...

Memento

Who needs a skull grinning brightly on their desk
when an apple core moulders so quickly?
There’s no getting away from it. Leaves brown in the gutter.
Blue islands form archipelagos in the bread.
Walk through the cemetery. See how even gravestones,
our markers of impermanence, decay. Then see wild grass
rushing up their sides, fountains of columbine spilling
over in the last days of autumn. Breathe the air
moving silently between tall trees.

Turning points

So the nights are getting longer. I was doing walking meditation in the library courtyard, feeling relaxed and yet self-conscious enough to walk at such an angle that the late shift librarian couldn’t see me from the café. He didn’t care, he was playing an electric piano, though I couldn’t hear it through the glass. Libraries are such important community spaces. My band used to practice on the sixth floor of the local library on Friday nights when we were too young for rehearsal studios (and pubs). Now I pace slowly backwards and forwards accompanied by a silent pianist. It’s a little surreal, I suppose.

Anyway, there I was shuffling up and down and the paving, walls, and surrounding buildings were lit with a kind of intense twilight that made everything more vivid.… Continue reading...

impermanence

In the co-ordinator’s office of the meditation centre where I’m volunteering, there’s a piece of wood engraved with the following:

A beautiful day. It will not come again.

As a call to appreciation, it seemed more urgent than carpe diem. This came home to me while looking out of the window of a bathroom on the upper floor, having ushered a ladybird from the sill behind the toilet to the ledge outside. I stopped to look at the rain lashing the chimney pots and garden, puddling on the flat sections of roof below. That set of circumstances: the grounds, the rain, me, the people in my life right now, will never line up again in quite the same way.

I took the photo above on another beautiful day, not long ago.… Continue reading...