Solitude

Going by the light, it's still early morning. But the clock says it's already seven. Must be the shortest day soon? The weather, these past few mornings, has developed a trick of bringing heavy black cloud across the sky from above me, thus down over the window, like the spaceship at the beginning of the very first Star Wars film to be seen (number four now, I think). That was impressive to see for the first time, in a cinema, not long after release. I remember an interview with, I imagine, George Lucas, talking about how he had wanted to create a "used future", and how all of it was new then.
    Pity to lose the sense of newness. It's all new, or let's treat it so. A week of solitude just passed, whole week: resting mother and baby gone, presumably rested, then the family onto the train to Bath for a pre-Christmas week of shopping (taking bicycles). Spent the time at the laptop in the kitchen (keep the dog company), but also walking, chopping/sawing logs, restoring the tarpaulins on the shed roof. Got them secure now, although everything inside is thoroughly rinsed. Perhaps a secure tarpaulin is a charm against any more wind and rain this year. Got out of bed this morning and wondered if I'd aged ten years in the night. No, but using my new sledgehammer in the splitting of logs - I have previously undiscovered muscles, and they ache.
     Interesting week to have the radio on in the background. The drama about the veto in Europe and the impossibility of a "wait and see" stance in politics. Everybody arguing from a position of indignant certainty, even while using "could be" rather than "will be". And arguing from an unquestioned assumption that their "road not taken" would have been the right road. No sense of irony or absurdity. As if one lot of politicians were efficient saints, and the other lot dangerous incompetents. The radio is where you hear people talk about "ordinary people", as though there are two kinds, and say things like "we must". Who's "we"?
    That Boson thing has been sending out signals again. The Higgs Boson. Soon, we'll have established its existence or non-existence. The toolkit from which "Reality" was made has (not) a Higgs Boson in it, right there next to the spanner. Great. What does that tell us about the owner of the toolbox? Change goes on, stays the same, journey brings us to our beginning, brings us here, all is well.
    And yesterday evening, I bought the complete works of Dickens on my Kindle, for 99p. Voices raised in Russia. Storms. So much. "They fall, and falling, are given wings." Rumi, from memory.