Couldn't sleep last night, eventually gave up trying and got up at some ungodly hour. I couldn't face being holed up indoors so took a walk. The sky was clear and lit by a gentle blue glow provided by the waning moon and the approaching dawn.
I walked along the canal, passing leafless trees with menacing, clawlike branches. All was quiet. A man lay huddled in a bus shelter, wrapped in a sleeping bag, tightly clutching his possessions. The air was cold but very cleansing.
I again pondered existence, and the purpose of it all. It feels incomprehensible to me that existence and our self-awareness are cosmic accidents that have no meaning. Why do we search for meaning if there is no meaning? Why do we ponder what is out there beyond the confines of this universe if there is nothing? Joe used to say that its because each of us has a God shaped hole that needs filling. I used to disagree violently, dismissing God and Afterlife as remnants of a more superstitious age, but now as my life enters the last lap these brave words feel ever so slightly foolish.
I don't know that there is nothing else, so if that something else requires something of me in this life than perhaps I should investigate. Is it possible to know without a doubt what that something is? Is there only one way, or many? What if I'm wrong?
I found an early morning bakery and bought a couple warm bread rolls and a cup of coffee. Fine, simple things. Life, for all its terror and sadness, is also full of great beauties and wonders; resonances perhaps of a Creator who is infinitely beautiful and wondrous and perhaps regrets the little freewill experiment.
I returned to the flat and found that Harry was playing with a new friend, a little Robin, still alive and apparently unharmed, but very distressed. I rescued the poor creature, put it in a shoebox in a dark corner to try and calm it down. Harry was not very impressed at all.
