Thought Picnic: Scrambling from subside to upside

A meander between cities

Just a week ago, I went for a long walk through parts of my somewhat twinned city that I had never been before. My adventurous walk which brought me to parks and meadows I never knew existed also led to the discovery of the fact that the river that divides the city of Manchester from that of Salford is a meandering waterway that you could cross multiple times almost in a straight line.

If one was not aware of this feature, you could with the bearings you originally had of first crossing the river, think you are walking in one direction only to find that you are not. The good fortune of having my phone on me, even as I tried to use skyscrapers as my focal compass points that left me a little lost, was my salvation when I eventually crossed the River Irwell four times on my way back home.

A thought to unthink

Then, one night of crossing the river visited an end-it-all thought, a jump for the finish that was resisted with the thoughtfulness that the story I would love written about me should end differently. You are challenged by situation and circumstance, plenty of hope coupled with the lack of means, the privation that shows on the scales as you run out of belt holes on the shorter end in realisation and situation.

This is turbulence, severe and shaking, the jolts are demanding of your ability to reason and demands are made on resources running scarce and you begin to seek the comfort of self-assurances that you cannot account for. Daily, opportunities come for which you project and prospect in the anticipation of interest that leads to interviews that come and but for the grace of God you flunk. Uncertainty begins to wield and hold sway.

An anchor for a soul in turmoil

It is then that you seek a hold, a stay for your sanity, a grip for your mental state, an anchor for your soul, the reading that you will not be overwhelmed, that whatever it is would not leave you completely overcome and overwrought with infirmity; the inability to get a result. Pushed further down by those seeking more out of you in the pretence that they have something useful to offer.

You then appear to find that assuredness in the amazing sturdiness of certain congregations of faith where the numbered is of the ethnic minority as if this matters not much to the indigene but a few. There I was greeted, as a grandfather, I probably looked like one in my dressing and with my cane, and still, there is such reserve in me not to be drawn into the sentimentality of the genuflected and the emotional.

A best on its way

I find it familiar and maybe too familiar to old experiences that have made me too sceptical for assimilation whilst recognising that there is something radically different in the message that provides succour and confidence making you wonder about the significance of it all.

Deep in my premonitions, I know this all will pass, it does quieten me, relieve me for certain aspects of productiveness and even upsets me, but I calmly assure myself, things turn and they will turn, I just have to banish the fear of the worst and face the prospect of the best that is yet to come and quite well on its way to me.