The Meaning in the Ghosts of Variables.

Dusk had fallen, unobtrusive and cold as a mist; the world outside my window was black when I turned the light on. The blackbirds were going mental, so I switched off the light and strained my eyes in the hopes of seeing a tawny owl, but the patches of sky uncovered by hawthorns remained clear. The gregarious rooks and jackdaws had noisily taken themselves off to roost an hour or so earlier, and the little birds that moved too quickly for me to identify had disappeared. I didn’t see the owl; but then again, I hadn’t been sure an owl was even there.

The cat-flap sounded, and I glanced down to see Roo lollop off up the garden on his crepuscular adventures. (His left elbow fused as birth, he did indeed ‘lollop’ off rather than ‘slope’ off in the manner of any other self-respecting cat.) Once he was out of sight, I began looking for the being behind the rustling in the pampas grass, but had no luck there, either, in front of the pampas grass, and on a lower level stood our little garden table. It had been beautiful, once, long ago, but the weather, we assumed, had ravaged it. We’d talked about getting a new table and a new set of chairs, but as the mosaiced furniture was still fit for purpose and characterful, we’d kept it. Bits of blue and white porcelain fell out from time to time, and because of its age, the go-go-go nature of family and working life, and finances in general, we patched it up but that was all. The table, like ourselves, just kept going. Until two weeks ago.

*

Darkness fell, and the switching on of lights was to no avail. No amount of jigging about would solve the scattered jigsaw of the mosaic table. When it got dimpsy, the blackbirds shrieked, and we still didn’t know why. The ambulance we hadn’t known had been waiting, arrived.

*

As I write tonight, two weeks later, I’m still uncertain as to the alarm of the blackbirds, and the world will be black outside my window when I switch on the night-light. The mosaic table is still a mess, and I find the odd piece of porcelain on the floor when I sweep the leaves off the patio and put them on the garden. We will never be able to clean that table up and put it back together – it’s too late for that now. But I noticed this morning that there are a few tiny blades of grass growing up through where, presumably, wind-blown soil has filled the gaps in the table, and wind-blown seeds, by some serendipity, have found enough nutrients to grow. As I looked, I saw more little plants had made the old mosaic table their home.

*

Maybe the youngling plants will thrive amid the comings and goings of coffee cups, gardening gloves, and the occasional football asteroid. Maybe that dark shape I see on the dead eucalyptus tree is a tawny owl. I suppose I’ll make my own meaning out of the ghosts of variables.

#existentailism #stroke #meaning #writing #naturalworld