Friday 19 October 2018

The gold is paling...

Autumn sun still cheers us every day, but the mornings and evenings ask for warm jackets, and the daylight grows shorter with each passing day. Coming weekend the clocks got back, and then an end to sunlit late afternoons, sipping tea or drinking beer on a street terrace or a friend's balcony.
We continue to walk the leaf-strewn streets and watch the light glinting on the canals.
David and I fill our days with many inquiries connected with the unsureness surrounding Brexit, the unsureness in connection with what's going to happen with the monumental building beside David's house, (the new owners maintain silence regarding their plans...)  and the definite intention of keeping the body fit despite the onset of creaking age!
We go for walks through this beautiful city, always discovering yet another hitherto unknown steegje (narrow street or alleyway) and rejoicing in the infinite variety of urban architecture that is to be seen here.
Watching the light glance upon the water, and soaking in the abundance of colour (see photo above!), forms a compensation, a kind of balance to the pictures of brutality and sheer ugliness that the media present us with. What to do with these images? I am glad not to have a television or take a daily newspaper. Always plenty of "news" to find via the internet. I often remember what the writer Saul Bellow said, many years ago: We are troubled by too much knowing. This was in the early days of internet, before Facebook, Twitter, whatsApp and so forth.

How about the Metaphysical poets?
Only a sweet and virtuous soul
Like seasoned timber, never gives.
And though the whole world turn to coal
Then chiefly lives...

Words to ponder on as autumn departs.




3 comments:

  1. Hi Wendy! Nice to see that you are still living life as it should be lived. Here in the not so holy Holy land I am well but still ranting about government and inequality. I very much enjoyed the short period we got to know each other. I just want to say hello to you and David. Take care and lots of love from me.

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  2. Which of the many Mikes is this? Nice to hear from you anyway!!

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