The eroding of the dream

It's getting on for a year since I blogged anything. Not without event but without comment. The most significant happening in the year was the death of my Mum on 12th April. Everything seems more looseley attached since then and I marvel that anything ever carried an air of permanence. Existence has changed from an endless land fading into an unseen horizon light years away to a fast burning fuse crackling towards the inevitable bomb.

At Mum's funeral I was told by my cousin that my favourite home of my childhood had been bulldosed to make way for 3 luxury houses which together would cost 1000 times more than what my parents paid for the house in 1959. The old house is still on google earth....for now.

In 2001 when Debbie and I were on honeymoon I photograped her in front of a massive cedar tree at Watersmeet. last week we visited the same place, but, no tree; in its place a circular wall with a lid covering the stump.

With the passing of the years, more and more things seem to drift from the essential to the futile. Those things which seemed urgent and vital the causes we embraced, the vision we carried seem more like a frantic grasp at something which is moving away from us at ever-increasing speed.

I can understand the hermits going off into the desert away from the decay, where time and effort can be put into the seeking of the imperishable and unchanging, although I believe it can be sought anywhere; it's not the geographical location which is important rather the absence of distractions. Hearing the love song is easier when someone isn't operating a road drill 30 yards away but the song is there for those who manage to filter out the racket.

In an antique shop recently there were some coal shovels similar to the ones we used at home when I was growing up. Junk really but ridiculously expensive as they were old. Today's stuff is tomorrows antiques. My smartphone in the british museum with onlookers chortling at how primitive it is.

What is to be done? Still restless, still dissattisfied still hungry. That doesn't go away. I am a hermit in babylon seeking to find out how to drown out the noise, to turn from the glitter, link with the eternal. To see it in colour rather than black and white.