Moving Along

Ailz is on the way home. 

Time concertinas. It seems no time at all since she left- and it isn't- roughly 36 hours- but ages since Dorothy died- which it's not- roughly 24 hours. Time, of course, isn't real. I love clocks with their moony faces and friendly ticking but I don't believe them. 

Joe and Victoria and Aria were with Ailz at the bungalow yesterday, also Peter, Odi, Fabrizio, Christa and Miguel. Also Keith (Ailz's brother). Keith is talking about hiring a skip and piling everything into it. Bish, bash, bosh- drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead. Peter was non-plussed. Ailz suggested Peter might organise a container and send the stuff that's worth keeping to Cameroon- which is something Cameroonians abroad do regularly. She's piled the car with things she knew her mother wanted her to have. And if we don't want it as much as Dorothy thought we might there are always the charity shops. She's told the neighbours- who have been Dorothy's primary carers these past few months- to help themselves...

I did some ringing round. Pat- Ailz's sort of godmother- she's known Dorothy longer than anyone still living (they were at school together)- was wonderfully matter of fact. She didn't pretend grief.   I forget her exact words but what they amounted to were, "Yes, she'd been ill." Pat is 90 and has lived...
 

Waking...

 We've had a succession of dull days. Today is dull too, but warm- and the birds are twittering away with the excitement of it all. It's as if the bare trees were a city of birds- and all of them on the phone.  Something went zinging past my ear when I was out topping up the feeders- a noise you don't hear too much in winter; I hadn't realised how much I'd missed it. I pursued my enquiries- and, yes, it was a bee. 

Neale Donald Walsch has brought out a fourth volume of his Conversations with God. I could wish the title was weightier or wittier but spiritual books do tend to have underwhelming titles. The Bible simply means The Book and The Koran translates as The Recitation. At least Conversations with God is an accurate description of the contents- Walsch talks to God and God talks to Walsch- simple as that. Like the Bible and the Koran Conversations with God tells it like it is, but where it scores over older texts is that it does so in the language of our culture- and if it contains extraneous matter (and it surely must do- because all books are of their time) the extraneous matter is proper to our culture and not matter that's proper to cultures of a long time ago. Everyone should read it.