epiphanicals (4/Jan/18)

I can’t wait for Epiphany… I could do with a good epiphany, I must be overdue for one by now… I can’t even remember the last time I had one, which was probably, well, the last time I had one which was… stop right there, I’m going around in circles like a wheel within a wheel like a hole inside a doughnut…… a day or so to go, which is handy to be able to schedule it into the calendar like that… I’m worried now will I notice it when it happens, which is be a big bang or a weedy whimper, and if I blink at just the wrong time will I miss it…… not only can’t I remember when I has my last one I can’t even recall what it was, or if I’ve ever even had one… if I did have then it couldn’t have been notable being it’s clearly not memorable… perhaps it was second-hand, or pre-loved or whatever silly phrase is being used this year for the used and discarded… maybe that’s what the elderly should be called, the Pre-loved Generation… after all many of them seem to have been discarded, issued invisibility cloaks and vanished into the back of the mind only to be retrieved at times like Christmas and birthdays, wheeled out like antiques that shouldn’t be touched or even looked at too long for fear of paying them too much attention should they get over-excited and shed grey hairs over your favourite sofa…… so, anyway, I suppose it’s not good form to insist on a particular epiphany, like ordering the most elaborate cake from the counter in a café, mind you, you can probably order it from Amazon or bid for it on E-Bay and have it flown by drone to your home in slightly-broken condition due to cheap, shoddy packaging…… what I’m thinking is if I don’t get my epiphany on Epiphany then do I have to wait a whole year for another chance?… which would be a bit unfair having waited however long I’ve waited this time for one, which, like I said I can’t bring to mind when, or even what, it wasn’t or even wasn’t…… it’s possible it’ll only happen when you’re not thinking about them so I’ll likely be working my mind-socks off the evening before with the distraction of de-decorating my house being it’ll be Twelfth Night… but then I have to try not to think about thinking about trying not to think about it… doh!

© 2018 robert greig

chapter one (1/Jan/18)

can’t quite get the blog-engines fired-up this morning… I’ve started this once already and found myself blathering on about calendars, Rip Van Winkle and Space… I know right, star as you mean to go on, they say, well this is working out as far from auspicious, or even semi-literate……

… needless to say I didn’t see in the new year, so to speak , which isn’t unusual as I haven’t done for years bothered with staying up until that midnight moment or magic tick (or is it a tock?)… and I will say now I won’t mention resolutions, I’ve already mentioned what I think of them a day or two back… why didn’t I?…. well, I haven’t for years now and found I like the idea of waking up in a new year that was not the one in which I went to sleep… hence the Rip Van Winkle thing from my now previously-abandoned bloggery… and if I’m awake when it happens it’s not the same….. it’s not that I expect anything to happen especially as in truth each day whatever name you give it just follows form the next and on and on, any specialness we ascribe is merely random, for whatever reasons, cultural, religious, seasonal, political, cynical, with New Year’s Eve being a bit out there, not one thing or another, a mere Gregorian calendrical quirk that itself took 300 years to refine from the previous Julian calendar in an attempt to tie in time more closely with astronomical events…. it’s human nature to tinker with time, and folly…… I think it’s still a work in progress but things tend to get explained away by those old scapegoats, tradition and habit…… anyway, New Year hasn’t meant much for me for a long time being it’s pretty arbitrary and mostly an excuse to have an humongous fireworks display and blast apart the sky to leave a deathly silence in its wake as Space in its even more humongous, airless bigness merely absorbs it, sits back and yawns “is that all you got?”… the big bangs do manage to cushion the blow of the inevitable flat-line afterwards of “well that’s it for another year, now what?”…. still, it’s a good excuse for a snog at midnight, if you ever needed one…

… but I wasn’t there, I was fast asleep and woke up as I said and suddenly it was not last year anymore…. I tried to look surprised but felt unconvincing at this charade… so I peeked through the curtains to find the moon still bloated, probably on new year punch, and drenching the still dark world basking and bathed in  faux daylight…. and the shadows which at night look very, very cool.

© 2018 robert greig

the one that got away (31/Dec/17)

(welcome, welcome, come in… tea? coffee? something stronger?… good to see you, it’s been long year hasn’t it and yet suddenly over, phew! I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted… anyway, take a seat, the comfy one, put your feet up and help yourself to my tempting array of biscuits… welcome, welcome to the last daily bloggery of 2017……)

I once had a worm called Santa, a peculiar name I’m sure you’re thinking to give to a worm but I’ll tell you why…

… when I first stumbled on him, not literally, he head or was wearing inadvertently a tiny bead of white styrofoam stuck to his chin, the kind used in packaging, at least I assumed it was his chin being that when it comes to worms it can be tricky working out which end is which… and do worms even have a chin?… potentially further confounded by the fact that worms are capable of moving forwards and backwards with equal agility… so this bead in my eyes became a beard, not simply by adding the letter ‘r’, and even though it had fallen off by the next day I still called him Santa as that was now his name and changing it would’ve been just wrong……

… there’s actually not much to tell about Santa the worm as he didn’t really do that much, and never did what I imagined would be Santa’ly things preferring much more to do worm’ly things being he was actually at the end of the day, and the beginning, a worm… such things as eating, burrowing and pooing… pretty much like us, except for the burrowing, and Santa tended to poo soil…… then one day, he wasn’t there, which is a bit like Santa himself as in the human Santa, suddenly there then just as suddenly not……

… to this day I still think of him somewhere, slithering, evading beady-eyed birds, eating, burrowing and yes, pooing…. soil.

© 2017 robert greig