Monthly Archives: March 2022

Arts

Making the path easier for others

LAID BARE

THE abandoned church in a derelict state is surrounded by a dry-stone dyke, an entrance gate and an exit gate.

An adult could swing a leg over the stone wall and it would be no obstacle for scrambling children. The main gates are easily accessible.

At some point in its history, however, the wall was deliberately breached. It was built up again, allowing for a three-feet-wide access. The gentle rise on the other side of the gap, which most walkers would have taken in their stride, had three stone steps inlaid.

On either side of this afterthought of a gate is grass. There is no path to it, no path after it, and no explanation as to why it is there. All we can conclude is that, at some point, someone needed the way made easier and someone else must have made it so.

Many will like and appreciate that as they attempt to walk through an undesignated area of land used by others in the past. Why it is there remains a mystery.

If we leave anything behind after we finish our walk here, may it also be signs that we made the path easier for others to follow.

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Arts

Guiding proverbs

PROVERBIAL MINES

MICHAEL DRAYTON, a poet who lived in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, once penned a poem about two travellers entertaining each other with proverbs.

The stanza is clear as to what happened. The first presented a proverb and the second replied with one which contradicted it. Nine proverbs were put forth and each one was promptly confronted by its opposite.

Drayton said that the travellers met as fools and parted none the wiser.

His point, many will imagine, is that wise men and women don’t live their lives by the words of others. They use those proverbs as guidelines, mining them for the good they can find in them. Then, in their own time and place, they apply that good as befits their situation.

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Arts

The right time of year

THE INCHWORM TALE

IN the 1952 film ‘Hans Christian Andersen’, Danny Kaye sang the Frank Loesser song, ‘Inchworm’.

After a debate over whether imagination or book learning was most important, he watches a caterpillar ‘measuring’ the diameter of a marigold in its repeated, regular movements while the children are learning their times tables in a repeated, regular chant.

Andersen tells the inchworm that its arithmetical skills will take it far, but suggests stopping awhile to notice the radiance and beauty of the flower.

Both options are good, with neither excluding the other.

If you would sow marigold seeds, this is the right time of year. If you would like to learn a new skill to help you get ahead, or work on increasing your imagination and appreciation, it is also the right time of year for that!

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