Friends

“What bothered me about this terrible recognition was the way in which the evidence of past things lies before us, trailing clouds of meaning… and we miss it!”

Hugh Hood – ‘A New Athens’

In my last posting – with reference to the start of my final term at the School – my train of thought terminated with a perhaps slightly unexpected reference to the circle of life. It was not the first time that this notion has featured in this eclectic assemblage of jottings.

I find myself – as life progresses – increasingly aware of its oblique nature. The events of the past make appearance alongside that which is present and – indeed –  that which is yet to come. Should an analog assist at this point you might try imagining that you are standing on the face of a huge clock at – say – seven o’clock. You can look back across the clock face to three o’clock – and indeed look ahead to ten o’clock, but when all is said and done time will still appear to sweep by in a continual circuit – a sort of temporal Mexican wave – with midnight marking both the end of the old and the start of a new cycle.

To what – I hear you ask – might this metaphysical mood be attributed?

On Friday last I attended the funeral and wake of a widely loved and sadly prematurely deceased member of the School’s support staff. The turnout was of such proportion that the diminutive chapel at the cemetery was almost literally bursting at the seams, the magnitude of which congregation might at least have offered some small consolation to the grieving relatives.

Such occasions do of themselves have a tendency to promulgate the philosophic. A little more than a year ago – in March 2014 – I posted this piece on the occasion of a not dissimilar event that had contemporaneously marked the the passing of one life and the arrival of another. The Kickass Canada Girl and I had attended the memorial service for a very old friend, the day before hosting a gathering at which was present a very dear but considerably younger friend, whose four month old baby boy inevitably and utterly stole the limelight.

At last Friday’s gathering the self-same friend (whose connection to the School was the source of our friendship) was once again present – this time bearing another very recent and as yet unmet addition to the family – a three week old daughter. On both occasions it was impossible not to be moved to the quiet contemplation of higher matters.

It would seem that – in these days – even our reminders of the cyclical nature of existence are now arriving periodically…

Perhaps the ultimate cybernetic system!

For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.

Anthony Powell – A Dance To The Music Of Time 

The weekend recently past found the Kickass Canada Girl and I (‘me’ for the purists – though that sounds wrong, wrong, wrong!) engaged at two very different events (home and away – one might say) which – between them – gave considerable pause for thought. It does no harm at all on occasion to step back from the hurly-burly to contemplate what this existence might truly mean and how all is ultimately connected.

This post might as easily have been entitled ‘The Circle of Life’ but the chance to reference Poussin’s wonderful painting (“A Dance to the Music of Time” – a particular favourite of mine) was too good to pass up. The statue therein of the double-headed god Janus is particularly pertinent in this instance.

The first of the weekend’s events was the memorial service for a very long-standing acquaintance – my oldest-friend’s wife’s father – whom I have known for more than four decades. He was, of course, of my parents’ generation – of whom in our circle only a very few now remain. He enjoyed a good life and the occasion was very much a celebration thereof rather than being overly solemn. None the less, such acts of remembrance always invite a degree of introspection regarding the transience of our existence – this one being no exception.

The occasion was also – however – a rather lovely gathering of family and friends ordinarily these days spread far and wide. It was a great pleasure to meet again so many good acquaintances with whom we only seem to coincide nowadays on feast days such as this.

The following day we ourselves hosted a long planned gathering of friends, some of whom had also been present the day before. This convocation had a considerably lighter tone and was – as far as could be discerned – greatly enjoyed by all those in attendance (thanks in no small part to Lidgates of Notting Hill and their wonderful pies!). Amongst those present was the lovely friend at whose wedding in Hong Kong the November before last we had been guests. The couple have recently added a brand new member to our extended circle; the devastatingly cute four-month-old inevitably being the centre of attention throughout the evening.

Between them these two events pretty much epitomised the aforesaid circle of life. The passage of old life passing as the tender buds of the new start to unfurl; connections re-kindled in friendships established over the decades; new faces welcomed and – mayhap – new affinities inaugurated; acquaintanceship initiated between companions previously unmet. We rejoice in the sharing of reminiscence. We celebrate the discovery of ‘ontologia exotica‘. We revel in our anecdotage. Life is affirmed. All is as it should be…

Such gatherings have a tendancy to foment the philosophical. I watched as the Kickass Canada Girl headed for the buffet deep in conversation with my ex-wife! Oldest Friend leant over to me:

“You’re in trouble!”, he opined trenchantly…

Well – I probably am now!