0249 To Enjoy.

to enjoy the enjoyable. It seems a modest enough aim and what we're meant to do by human nature, surely? and yet that urge to set up the next scene, to move on - do you remember those old films where the heroes were always saying to their side-kicks 'let's get outa here! ...' pioneers of the about-to-be - this moves us on; so 'here' doesn't stand much chance of being enjoyed; and nor does 'now'; and can we ever say whether we enjoy things more or less than others - or more or less than our parents or grandparents? and here I remember my mother, who could recall in vivid detail with a humbling gratitude, every minute of some rare act of kindness done many years before - an unexpected car trip to the park, a fresh baked cake, those things which are small change to real neighbours but which she so often gave, so rarely received; (the old should never move, uproot, unless of gipsy nature; friends are not so easy made among their settled peers) . So how precious the nap of an afternoon, if properly enjoyed: a few minutes, and the brain's wiped clean of all the morning's bruising, weighed concerns. The eyes open on the sight, today, of an angel depicted by Piero della Francesca to console a duke whose only son died as a youngster in his bloom; and thus he has the likeness of that son, enjoying eternity in my back room. So instead of getting outa here, a book of poetry idly picked up, with the phrase 'the world forgetting, by the world forgot'; and then, gently overwhelmed by the lovely yearning to visit that place where poetry enjoys itself in unrevealed mysteries - mine, his, hers, yours, read, written - and in being, simply to enjoy simply being.