Stardust.

I now move into the vastness stage.

The vastness stage sounds like something from Glastonbury, the place where all the prog rockers go to strut their stuff.

In fact, it is the moment that I look at this thing and see the size of it. It is much, much bigger than I had suspected. I had a moment of terror last night, looking at the bigness. I thought of TS: ‘I shall show you fear in a handful of dust.’

It was not that I was in denial. I had looked reality hard in its basilisk eye. I understood very well the fact of death, the fact of absence, the space left behind. I knew all that.

But somewhere, in the back on my mind, a voice hummed from my practical self, from my Britishness, from the culture itself. The song this voice sang was very plain. It said: this happens to everyone. Everyone’s mother dies. I think I made a category error. I muddled up usual with small. It’s also to do with age. Eighty-one is a pretty good age. The great span was achieved; the race was run. There was none of that jarring tragedy of a person cut off in their prime. So there was a natural order to the thing.

It’s the paradox of death. It’s so normal. And yet, it is oceanic and odd and shocking and wrong. So, there was a moment when I looked onto the vast spaces, and felt fear.

I find it amazing that such a little person could leave such a great gap. She was tiny, like a little bird by the end.

That is what I am contemplating now. It came as a bit of a surprise. I have to stare at the vastness and accept it. I remember that I carry vastness inside me, since I, like all humans, am made of stardust. I love that fact and never cease to be astounded by it. A gentleman was talking about it on the World Service a couple of days ago. I like to think that humans came from stars and will, in a metaphorical way, go back to stars. The depth of the absence is like the depth of the universe. I go outside and look at the night sky and imagine all the Dear Departeds twinkling down on me. There’s quite a party, going on up there.

I don’t know where people go when they don’t exist in the world any more. For the moment, I’m going to put them in the sky. (Sometimes I give them to the hills; sometimes they live in the woods; sometimes they exist still for me in the wind.) Just now, they are stars, shining down from the infinite spaces. They are gentle and beautiful and merry, and a very, very long way away.

 

Today’s pictures:

I have no star pictures, so here is a hedge and a hill and a wall instead:

Nothing left in my brain. So, instead, here are forty-seven pictures of a horse, rolling.

And...into the wall I crash. I forgot to get iron tonic, which was a big mistake. I did make soup, the honest vegetable kind which my mother calls Good Woman Soup. (As I make it, I wonder hopefully whether the very act of softening onions will turn me into a Good Woman. I do, after all, believe in the mystical properties of soup.) I did have some thoughts about National Poetry Day, and the Daily Mail, and the lunacy of the government shut-down which is happening in America, and the saving grace of Jon Stewart, whose videos I illicitly watch on the YouTube. (Sorry, not available in the UK, says the official Daily Show site, regretfully.)

But now: those thoughts are gone. It’s Friday. My work is done. The HorseBack stuff is dusted. Stanley the Dog is walked and Red the Mare is seen to. The circuits in my brain fizzle and fuse. There is not one ounce of energy left. I am going to sit very, very still in a silent room.

This morning, I had an unaccustomed spare half hour. I was actually ahead of schedule, which was so odd it went against muscle memory. The sun had come out for five minutes so I ran down to the field and stood in it with my horse.

I really, really like standing still with my horse. I love riding her and working her and teaching her new things, but mostly, I love standing still with her. She was in a mood of stillness too, so she nodded her head over the crook of my arm and went to sleep in the October warmth. I could feel her growing heavy and she made happy little sighing noises. I made happy little sighing noises. We sighed at each other for about ten minutes. I shut my eyes, and felt the world.

I did not attempt coherent thought. I have never been able to meditate but it was the nearest to meditation I’ve ever come. I felt some profound shift, almost in the viscera, as if all those particles of exploded stars which make up the atoms of my body were reconfiguring themselves. (I can never quite get over the fact that humans really are, as Joni Mitchell once scientifically sang, made of stardust.)

Then Red gave a great snort and I let her go and she ambled off to have a glorious, indulgent, operatic, drama queen roll. And then she got up and shook herself and gazed at me for a bit, and then she Minnie-the-Mooched across to me for a bit more love. Which I gave her.

And then I went and did all my work and used up all my brain and now all I have for you is about forty-seven pictures of a horse rolling.

But what a horse.

And what a roll.

Happy Friday.

What Red the Mare sees from her paddock:

Interesting new member of the herd. Stanley the Dog clearly now believes he is a horse:

Happy red girl with her small friend:

Do not anthropomorphise, say the stern voices in my head. But I can’t help thinking that is the closest an equine comes to a smile:

And now – for the ROLLING:

I love this face. Do you see what I just did?:

And then she does her best Minnie the Moocher, as she comes across for one more minute of love: