September 9th 2009

    When the moment of contentment finally arrives a mind stops.  It no longer potters around occasionally bumping into things.  Those last few moments of preoccupation are dire for those able to watch.  They become memory and they are haunting.  They are still moments in the mind and mostly they are unhappy.

    It is a moment that lingers.  It lurks amongst thinking and it is remarkable because it is so still within the daily chaos of movement.  As though it were in a mood to sulk and watching from a long way off.  And there appears an obligation to dig out this still moment, shake it by the tail to check it for life.  Then rattle it around for a solution, after the manner of those who believe understanding is possible through degrees of fiction, or recall or science or some universal pattern.  

    But I would suggest this passing through a still moment in order to reveal an uncertain thing, is older than the generations of man.  We inherit this.  And probably there are real things like footsteps on the moon because of it.

    I do know that still moments are true things.  Not because they are constant as some interpretations of true would have it, but because they remain still moments in the mind.  An unnecessary distinction you might think.  But a thing that is constant can be measured and weighed and then sent along to the incinerator.  A thing that is true cannot, it belongs somewhere else.

    So I wonder how to describe it and then I wonder whether to describe it, because I have found that still moments are often in my mind safer left that way. Like a tidy up in a barn or an attic I suppose, there are parts that should not be disturbed because there are happier things to do.

tim candler

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