Pandemics and Wayland's Smithy

 No matter what the universe has in store, it cannot take away from the fact that you were born. You’ll have some joy and some pain, and all the other experiences that make up what it’s like to be a tiny part of a grand cosmos. No matter what happens next, you were here. And even when any record of our individual lives is lost to the ages, that won’t detract from the fact that we were. We lived. We were part of the enormity. All the great and terrible parts of being alive, the shocking sublime beauty and heartbreak, the monotony, the interior thoughts, the shared pain and pleasure. It really happened. All of it. On this little world that orbits a yellow star out in the great vastness. And that alone is cause for celebration.”

― Sasha Sagan, For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World

A couple of days ago Window 10 said it was updating itself, this took several hours but at the end I had 'big letters' everything became large and I had to shift the upfront page to fit the screen.

But today I thought of Sagan's words which would put into perspective what 'life' is all about, and one thing it is not is a happy continuous road, there are bumps and potholes all along the way. To pretend what is happening does not exist is a foolish act, we are living through an adjustment in history. Think the bible called it 'seven years famine, seven years feast'. Yes even the wheat crop is 40% down ;)

In fact even the world's news has disintegrated into a continuous bleat about the pandemic, but then news is always bad isn't it?

So it is up to to us to turn to the happy things in life, thing that float through your mind on a daily basis, and today a picture of Moss sitting at the foot of a tree, with a ball placed at his feet and his eyes willing me to move on as I sat and meditated outside Wayland's Smithy, a Neolithic long barrow restored by Stuart Piggott and Richard Atkinson in the 60s. Moss was content in his doggy life, a long walk, a ball to be thrown, simplicity itself. I was just happy with that sunny Autumn day, as I am now thinking about it. A moment caught in time.

I could never meditate properly my mind flutters around like the butterflies that grace the buddleia flowers, not quite understanding the need to stand still and reflect, but loving the moment as it is. Like for instance being stopped by the sound of a buzzard high in the air yesterday in the garden.

I remember walking back along the long chalk path, and in the far distance there was a man who seemed to be jumping in and out of the woods in a strange fashion. Slightly worried though Moss would have defended me, I drew abreast of the man, and he explained his strange behaviour to allay my fears. His dog had gone off in the woods and he was just checking that it was still there.

Its mythology is here..... the tale told in Saxon times.

"All the account which the country people are able to give of it is 'At this place lived formerly an invisible Smith, and if a traveller's Horse had lost a Shoe upon the road, he had no more to do than to bring the Horse to this place with a piece of money, and leaving both there for some little time, he might come again and find the money gone, but the Horse new shod."