Paying Ready Attention

Night Driving You could tell it was going to rain. You could smell it in the musty dankness lifting from the soil. You could feel it in the heavy touch of the wind, fast and strong, around the hedges and rough pruned street trees. You could see it in the green tint edges of the clouds above, sealing in the sky, shutting out the early evening stars. As I reversed the car out and away from the house, the first heavy drops began to fall. By the time I stopped at the third set of lights it had become heavy.   Real rain.   Winter rain.   All around me the world was full of mirrors; water sheened surfaces reflecting the light.   Shop lights on the pavement, broken by passing figures.   Car headlights on the road.   The on off flash of my indicator in the paint sheen of the car in front.   Waiting at the pedestrian crossing a man balanced a stack of pizza boxes in one hand and held a wine bottle in the other.   He kep...

It’s only when you go back into the country that you realise now noisy cites can be.   Even if you wake in the night, it’s rare for the background hum of cars to be silent.   You may jolt awake thinking, “what woke me?” to hear the hoo-ha wail of a fire engine or ambulance.   It may be the noisy clatter of possums on the roof, or the animated chatter of party goes, weaving their way home.   But it is rare to wake to anything resembling silence. It was chill outside, but warm in bed.   Unfading bright light leaked through a gap in the curtains.    I could tell that it was a blue-sky day and that the scudding clouds of the day before had blown away.   And by the silence, I could tell we were in the country. Then a cow mooed and the kids laughed at the comedy of the unfamiliar sound.   It did not have the deep resonance of the cartoon moo beloved of TV shows.   It was more a bellow of shock that spoke of ambush or surprise. ...

Northern Cardinal It probably does no harm to have a plan; to have thought about what you would like to happen, and then, with a plan in place, to do as much as you can to make it happen.   That seems to be a recipe for getting the most out of the bumpy ride that is opportunity, for making sure that what little time you have is well spent.   But too much planning can get in the way of the delightful surprises and shocks that come along to mess up your day in the best and most unpredictable way. Failure to prepare has well known consequences, but over preparation turns you into a clock watching bore and a trip into a timetable. I had not planned to go to Arizona, so I thought it more necessary than usual to prepare. It was an opportunity that dropped into my lap in an otherwise work dull morning.   It was a gift horse and appropriately I have no skill or interest in dentistry. Outside my office window it was early autumn, but in Arizona it would be early sprin...