I believe it was Des Carter (grocer, philatelist, father of several) who said “I am, therefore I am.” I could not have put it for better or for worse myself, and would have said the same thing had I thought of it. It’s another one of those days I really should wake up, like Sleep who, in mythology, when called upon by Iris bearing a message from Juno, “shook himself out of himself.”
That reminds me: when I was with Jasmine there was a book, or Books, to be precise. It was our task to read a chapter or two each day, and from our reading learn a lesson, and become better people, and not turn out like all those idlers who wander about from house to house, and not only the idle but tattlers also and busybodies speaking things which they ought not. We must not be like that, we were urged. But that was then, and this is now.
I am going to have a cup of tea – jasmine – a subtle fragrance, it reminds me of Jasmine – I mentioned her just now – who would lull me to sleep with a kiss and a whispered prayer and a compliment or two back in (wait a moment while I consult the annals) the early 1990s. That was also the time when our neighbours (the Mr. & Mrs. Socrates) would buttonhole us over the garden fence to ply us with question upon question; we had answers for none of them:
No, we would say, No, we do not know the difference between justice and fair play; No, we do not know if love is permanent, or even what it purports to be.
It turns out that love is not permanent, unless what Jasmine and I had was not love at all but unbridled lust and a shared interest in the music of The Bee Gees. It was a long time ago, and I would like to point out that I have grown out of the latter, and replaced it with a keen interest in trying to understand what everything means. To that end, I am having a go at Bertrand Russell’s “History of Western Philosophy”. It’s a book I’ve had since I was a teenager, and I’ve never been able to get past the first couple of chapters. But I was so much younger then, I’m older than that now.
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Conrad Titmus