New Cabin - It's been far too long....

 

Dear readers - It's been far too long. Are you still out there? I will understand if you are not, and then I will simply write into the void, because the void always listens - whether we want her to or not. That is something it is always worth bearing in mind.

An awfully long time ago - more than half my lifetime ago - there was a meme doing the rounds. Yes, even back then, before the advent of mobile phone technology and before the advent of the internet, or Facebook, or Twitter, we still had memes; it was just that they were passed from mouth to mouth in the old-fashioned way, just like a biological virus. So, anyway, back in those days there was a meme doing the rounds that said "Be careful what you wish for - it might just happen..." It turns out, the origin of that phrase is Aesop's Fables and a little tale called "The Old Man and Death" The Old Man and Death - Fables of Aesop

This very brief teaching story tells of a world-weary man, bent double with age, having to bend to pick up sticks and becoming so fed up with his lot that he calls upon death to "come and take me now!" For dramatic effect, you need to imagine one of the Monty Python team, or maybe Baldrick from Blackadder wailing "Oh Deff, where is thy sting? Jast cam and tayke me nah!" - and now, in my mind it's the weary voice of Dot Cotton... Anyway, this world-weary poor man calls on death to come and take him, and wouldn't you know it, with a puff of mist from the Styx, there in front of him stands death, all billowing black cape. skull sunken face and the stench of the grave hanging about him. Of course, the world-weary man immediately recants, reckons he just called up death to help him get the bundle so sticks back on his shoulder.

According to our own Thomas Bewick (who published the fables with his illustrations accompanying them in 1818) apparently, the moral of the tale is "...upon every little accident which happens in their way, Death is immediately called upon, and they even wish it might be lawful for them to finish with their own hands a life so odious, so perpetually tormenting, and vexatious. When, let but Death make his appearance, and the very sense of his near approach almost does the business: then it is that they change their minds, and would be glad to come off so well as to have their old burthen laid upon their shoulders again. But wise and good men know that care and numberless disappointments must be their portion in their passage through life, and know also that it is their duty to endure them with patience; for he is the best and happiest man who neither wishes nor fears the approach of Death."

In other words, at the slightest difficulty we encounter in life, we are all too ready to end it all, and yet, as soon as there is the slightest suggestion that we may be under threat of death, we immediately wish we had another year, another month, or even another day.

So, what has all of this got to do with writing into the void? Well, as I said, the void (for which we could just as easily say "the unconscious") is always listening and will respond to whatever our poor burdened ego expresses and will compensate of complement it, but whichever it is, it will always react - whether we realise it or not.

As I've been writing, I've wondered what byway of the transderivational search process led me to these musings, (Transderivational search - Wikipedia) and then I realised. My original intention had been to post something about finally having the new cabin finished and in use. This then evoked memories of the old cabin - And then I remembered how, in November 2021, in the wake of the worst of lockdown, I had made an appointment to re-visit my therapist again. In the first session when I was explaining what had brought me back to therapy (for the umpteenth time in a thirty odd year process of cycling in and out - more often in than out - of therapy), I said that I felt as though I had sunken into a place of "comfortable complacency." This was on November 23rd, and then, on the night of November 26th, Storm Arwen struck, bringing down a huge tree in the garden, which in turn crashed through and destroyed my first cabin -I guess that was how the transderivational track went...

So, be careful what you wish for....