A small brown leave spirals down and plops on to the surface of the pool; I'm transfixed. For one second I experienced meditation.
Sitting shirtless and dusty in my secret, dark and cool corner of the garden I'm watching my tea steep. I'm resting from my garden work.
The house is on show this afternoon; in essence it's been for sale since three seconds to midnight on 31 December.
Barefoot I've swept mostly dead leaves into papery rustling piles. I''ve just heard the distinct cry of a fish eagle; I almost didn't notice, but when I did I really did; I'm suddenly conscious again. Fully.
My best though has been peacefully shuffling around - in the sun and on my backside - pulling weeds from between the pool paving. Also very therapeutic. And exacting in its focus.
My mind's stream of conscious trickled down an explainable (well, to me at least) gully to mulching, both mentally and in the horticultural sense; it then sloppily gurgled to London's Hampstead Heath, in particular the untamed, wild western heath of which I have countless memories, and experiences from when I lived and dreamed in London; I imagine that my imagination has been triggered by Theroux's novel 'My Other Life', which so far seems to largely be about his London writing life. And the fact that winter's eeking into spring in the far north and that soon the Heath will be transformed too. From the delicious and rotted history of centuries, new and abundant life will spring forth from its coffee-thick-mucky mulch that so intrigues me, and that contains the seed of so many men.
The truth that has set this family free oozed from this cracked suburban surface three seconds before midnight. Painful. Very. But a clean break at such an important pinnacle on everyone's calendar.
The emasculated alpha male was forced out at the dawn, of the first, with his poison. He went across the road. A year for change and truth. Time to sell the house.
I am merely, and most happily, a traveller; albeit my pack is still weighty.
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