Does one drink tea in the way that one might eat chocolate? As a comfort, as a distraction? Perhaps.
Sitting drinking a mug of tea, slow, reflective music played on the radio. It seems that it was by a German composer called Nils Frahm. It was almost minimalist, the silences between notes as important as the sound between the silences.
It was music without memories, music into which one might escape from the array of images that are evoked by much of the music played.
To escape for a few moments was welcome. To sip tea and stare into nothingness was a brief interlude away from thoughts that crowd out tranquility.
Work brings an escape from the chasing black dogs. To get there at 7.15 in the morning and to stay until after six o’clock allows a full day filled with other things of which to speak.
It is in the evening that the dark moods close in; the evening, and in the early hours of the morning. To wake at two or three o’clock has become something to dread, the shadows of memory are longest at such times. Returning to sleep becomes a struggle. Knowing that the alarm will sound at six and that sleep is needed serves only to add to the anxiety.
Trying to heal the past through words is futile. What are words? Sounds without any of the beauty of music. No more than vague utterances, approximations, unsuccessful attempts at expressing feeling.
The book of Philip Larkin poems in the hall shelf offers wisdom. Larkin proposes a stoic endurance of time, a striving for enjoyment, for if one finds no enjoyment in the here and now, where will one find it?
What are days for?Days are where we live.They come, they wake usTime and time over.They are to be happy in:Where can we live but days?Ah, solving that questionBrings the priest and the doctorIn their long coatsRunning over the fields.