The text read "CTID!" and, knowing the sender, (once I had deciphered the meaning) I believed him, absolutely. 100%. Rock steady. Everlasting. Sure as eggs and apples and everything.
Something I've always envied, that. A sense of certainty.... 'Knowing' in that way.
Like Mozart must have felt when he first touched a harpsichord... or Joe Hart, possibly, when he first said:
"OK, I'll go in goal..." when he was just a little Shropshire Lad.
As I meander into midlife, it seems to me that it's all been a bit more of a 'that'll do for now' kind of affair. That's not to say that grand ambition hasn't driven me, at times, or that I lacked the courage of my convictions in the moment, but (as it's supposedly been for the marvellous Dame Judy) I always needed to know where my bag was and that the rehearsal room door wasn't locked.
A few summers ago I was swimming in a lake at the end of an environmentally friendly, smugly beautiful irrigation system, on the land of my last revoltingly wealthy employer. It was a thick,warm, golden August evening, all lazy orange and lovely. A few of us threw off our weekend conference gear and dived in (ok, I had my cozi and goggles with me, having checked it out online first, but hey, it felt wild and impetuous just the same!) and we swam out into the open limpid water. There wasn't a breath of wind and the surface was silky smooth. out of the stifling Powerpoint presentations and feigned enthusiasm for what was next on the schedule, I found myself treading water and considering the stillness, the beauty of the illusion of time stopped. Free in the coolness and quietness all elemental.
But, in truth, the Irises rising up around me in their perpendicular sculptures along the water's edge, were just so slightly quivering in imperceptible breezes and the insects skimming the surface were disturbing it, tinyly.
Everything was alive and growing. Everything surging towards its prime or sighing into decline, back into the fertile water, back into the bigger picture of being.
Not an epiphany. Much smaller. Just a moment of understanding that living is movement and change and development and discovery and how beautiful, how heartachingly gorgeous it all is.......
The big balls in Trafalgar Square are replaced by the next spectacular reference for us to mutter about over a pint after work... and the exhibition goes on.
However, how wonderful to know that alongside us in all of this we have our own private, permanent collections, don't we? All which we choose to hold close as we try to navigate the unpredictable?
Excuse my shameless, battered heart, but I reckon that's where love comes in.
For a City, For a beautiful game, for the mysteries of life, for another.
Love.
Unchanging.
Posted by... Mim
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