Sunday 3 May 2009

5 days, Sunday meditation

(really 5 days and this is the 6th)
Up, Down.

And if the old man climbed out of the cart and stretched himself (things were gathering pace now) and looked at where the pump had been that the soldiers had blown up so that nothing should be left standing, and complained, saying, 'What are we going to do about water?,' he, Michael K, would produce a teaspoon from his pocket, a teaspoon and a long roll of string. He would clear the rubble from the mouth of the shaft, he would bend the handle of the teaspoon in a loop and tie the string to it, he would lower it down the shaft deep into the earth, and when he brought it up there would be water in the bowl of the spoon; and in that way, he would say, one can live.
        J.M. Coetzee, The Life And Times Of Michael K, final paragraph.

marvellous story, often quoted by me, easily misunderstood i suppose, everything tending this way for some long time, no complaints, achieving mostly equanimity ... till only this pesky tendency to want to describe it all persists :-)

Down.

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