September is coming soon, pining for the moon - Sing a new song

The body's biorythyms mirror the world's sometimes, and sometimes not. There are times at the moment when 'i can't relate to joy', being the inevitable down after a full and rewarding summer which had so much to take in. I can accept this as part of the ebb and flow of the life i wish to live. So I go like an addict to the music store and the bookshop to dose up on Bob Dylan and P.G. Wodehouse and receive my 'shelter from the storm'. This suggests to me that a certain ring of hell must be defined by those who live for 'pure amusement' alone. There is nothing so soul-destroying as living for yourself and your own leisure. The heart designed to love frustrates itself when it is without an object, which explains why cooking for one seems so unfulfilling, as cooking should be done with love. This reminds me of a Polish nun who was directing our 'small choir' of about a hundred in Taizé, and after a good enough rendition of a song said - now, sing it again with love. Afterwards, she said - now, did you hear the difference? And we did.

So after a summer of the music and landscape of the West of Ireland, the endless photographic scenes of Venice, the emotional moments of Germany, I've received enough and need to go back to giving again. That which I can give anyway. Most people have too much work to do, and a minority have not enough, while a few strike the right balance. Most pitiful of all is the rich Gentleman of old, whom I laugh lovingly at in P.G. Wodehouse's stories, but even Bertie Wooster has a Jeeves to love and be responsive to. The rich person with no life other than their own individual amusement is the most to be pitied, even if s/he be the most fat. So I am ready to go back to the realms of academia, and make another circle in the sand of shifting time, wiped away though it may be with the next lap of the coming tide. Life keeps asking us to try again, like some benevolent teacher who already knows the answer but wants us to get it for ourselves through our own efforts. Time to sing the same song again, this time with love.