I wasn’t worried – I had a micro-flashlight with fresh batteries and a blessed shell-fish in my back-pack – what could go wrong?
Author Archives: mattpadwick
crash
I bump into someone. He’d had a crash. Said his recovery began when he took his hands off the steering wheel. “And your feet off the pedals.” added his wife. Yes, he nodded, that too.
late
The sun rises slowly to a bird’s call and the goat’s bell and the lap, lap, lap of the tide on the pebble beach. There are no roads here everybody sets there watch by the morning ferry which is late again.
What I Want
Standing in a vast field row-upon-row of carrots green-tops touching the horizon I pull just one.
tea for two
When Ed finally arrived at The Himalaya Guesthouse and Café in Darjeeling he was given a key and directions to his room. The door was already unlocked, the television was on, he went in. “Hello?”
silence is…
Some people like being in a queue, it’s comforting, somehow proving that they are in the right place at the right time, and engaged in valid activity. For Ed it was almost always the opposite. Like now. It was the middle of the night, the whole world was in bed and asleep, but not him.
edge of unknowing
The cars were already travelling fast as they passed. It would be difficult for the drivers to pull over here even if they wanted to. He was sure most of them didn’t even see him. The cars were mostly big, usually with just one pale person inside; while accelerating they were steering, changing gear, drinkingContinue reading “edge of unknowing”
precious
He kept coming back to the silence. It was so big. And surprising. Even when a donkey brayed somewhere in the same valley – loud, long and loaded with loneliness – it did not change the silence, it enhanced it. Like jewels around a beautiful neck.
the talking tree
Ed was reading a book in a dentist’s waiting room. “The flower grows without mistakes. A man must grow himself until he understands the intelligence of a flower. He looked up from the book. There were no flowers, just a tank of goldfish swimming in circles.
the mathematics of wisdom
Sometimes it was during the breaks that the real meditation happened – moments when it was obvious that wisdom is not something you have, but a wavelength you tune into.