The tower

I have been practicing selective reading. I finished two books in two days in my usual manner of skipping the boring bits. One of them was ‘Knowledge of Angels’ by Jill Paton Walsh. The second was ‘Northern Lights’ by Philip Pullman. Both good books. Both made me sad for different reasons. Then again, all good books make me sad.

There are days I am so busy I forget. And there are days the darkness is real enough to touch it. I am surrounded by it from all sides and I try to stop its advance by lighting candles around me. It’s a tide of darkness, lapping at my fragile light circle. Ebbing and swelling around the limit of light. Threatening to engulf everything.

It’s not evil. It’s not even caring, or uncaring. It’s just darkness. Human soul is as full of it as any other place. So I am lighting candles one by one. I light them when I hope for a better future. When I do something for someone I’ve never seen before and will never see again. When I write one more page of my novel. When I feed the small army of cats I’ve acquired under my building.

There are so few things that are really important.
None of them is something you can hold in your hands or own.

The smell of your beloved on the sheets when you wake in the morning.
The kindness in the eyes of a stranger.
A place in your heart to call home.
The patience to let go when people refuse to understand. The patience to hold one’s tongue when the other knows no better.
Everything is fragile and fleeting.
Like a circle made of candles against a tower of darkness.
Keep walking. Move on. Don’t look back. Don’t think, lest you lose heart. Breathe and put one foot in front of the other.
That’s my girl.