Back from Rome. But not quite! At least not all of me, some bits are missing: my attention is caught, snagged in some Roman street. Is this a complaint that Florence is not Rome? And another thing, I thought (imagined?) that I caught a glimpse of ‘arry in Rome. Perhaps he was hurrying into the English cemetery. Though it couldn’t have been, all the evidence is that he is long dead. Years ago maybe even in the last century. Who told me? Did you tell me or was it somebody I met by chance in the street, like in the movie The Third Man or The Singing Detective. These images from movies are stronger than so called real life. Don’t you think? It might be that I am a bit-actor in some movie. I hope it’s not your movie with you as director and producer.
Or did I dream it? And in the dream I’m sleeping on a narrow bench, maybe homeless. George Orwell down and out in post-war Vienna. Do you know that place of being lost when out walking. There’s been turn after turn down similar looking streets, alleys, the walls of the buildings towering close overhead, claustrophobic but free in some uncomfortable way and lost. Being lost might be even more free: suddenly free of memory. I can take any turning and it no longer matters. Then suddenly I am no longer lost. Am I relieved? Yes but at the same time I have lost the freedom of being lost. The dynamic of ‘I know’ <> ‘I don’t know’. In the middle must be what we could call meditation – I neither know nor don’t know – the place of sitting with God (ok – whatever that is!).
