Penny and I go for a long walk, walking out together with the sun and back with the moon. Along an old railway track, there is a little hut and a still-smouldering fire; the embers are dancing like galaxies and though the evening is cold, we sit close, warm and laughing on the rails.
"What do you think about cremation?" asks Penny.
I think he's being morbid.
He persists. "Would it be earth, fire or water for you?" he asks.
Earth, I suppose, but I'd rather not think about it. And him?
"Cat food," he says with a grin. "Cats would love me. Bit of a pain for the person who has to chop me up and cook me and can me, but I'd probably make about twenty good tins. Could call it Penny Purr. That would be good."
I can't find in me the easy acceptance of death which is such a part of Buddhism. I rail against it. Good job I'm not a Buddhist, really, I'd be a rubbish one. Penny, by contrast, has a gift of wisdom and a gift of acceptance of all. A sort of karmic tolerance. I drink from him, drink with him, drink to him.
Back to the hearthside of home, and Freddie is making "warm-up totems" ? small wooden birdlike sculptures in preparation for his next Zarathustrian sculpture to go with "Nietzsche's table." It will be "Nietzsche's chair." His mind flickers, dancing like fire, and I think it may be another masterpiece.
I do more work on my talk about time; it is only a ten-minute talk, but sometimes the shorter a talk is, the harder it is to prepare.
Suddenly today is a day of sunshine, real spring sunshine. But even the sunshine looks stricken, in my eyes, when I open my emails and read a message from a beloved friend of mine, writing to tell me of the death of a friend of his, who I also knew slightly. It is a shadowy death, and looks like a possible suicide, particularly because he'd been suffering melancholy for a long time. The ripples in the pond where the stone is flung. "He slipped through my net of love," writes my friend, who did so deeply love that beautiful and saddened man.
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Jay Griffiths is the author of WILD: An Elemental Journey and A Sideways Look at Time.