These pieces are ongoing responses to Life, reflecting my interest in art and music, as well as what Buddhists call 'the manure of experience'. Future titles will include an essay on Silence, a piece on Aquinas and the Zen Master, and a short story called Chicken Legs.
THE SWALLOW
"A day of silence, that was the plan. To drive across England to a Cistercian monastery, arriving in time for early morning Mass. I’d booked a place in the guesthouse for a ‘quiet day’, and would immerse myself in the wordless peace of a Trappist community until after Vespers. I left soon after daybreak. It was a soft July morning, the hour of the small animals and birds. Once off the motorways I found myself in a pastoral landscape of rolling meadows and bleached cornfields, hedgerows and dark green forests under a windy sky.
I rang the bell. Nobody came. I hesitated, aware of a cctv camera watching me. I wondered what to do. Were the monks deep in prayer? But I could hear voices. I rang again. After a while a monk opened the heavy wooden door. He looked confused as I introduced myself, but shuffled me laconically into a small room near the front door. It had four 1950s armchairs and a wooden table and smelled musty. The carpet was dirty, the wastepaper basket full of used tissues. I was a stranger, and you welcomed me…. The window looked out over a noisy gravel driveway where I’d parked my car alongside several others (evidently a retreat group was staying in the guesthouse). Before he hurried away I somehow remembered to ask how to find my way through the precincts to the church, and how to let myself in and out using the security keypad on the front door of the guesthouse. The toilet I would have to find for myself..."