For Whom the Tiny Bell Tolls

—03.02.2000—

I saw the little mouse in the closet again last night. It was laying there, legs splayed out, lying on a little stain in the wood, dead on a spring evening.

I’d removed the dried up peanut butter dish the previous night thinking it had moved on. Had it already been laying there then, quietly, without me noticing? I scooped it up in a piece of notebook paper and decided to put it out in the garden, which would have been the original plan had it lived that long.

On stepping out of the front door, the somber occasion was immediately interrupted by a gust of wind which sent the little mouse flying from its college-ruled funerary sheet to be blown irreverently about the patio. I had to search for a few moments, flashlight in hand, in order to recover its small gray body.

Having found it, I cut the service short by offering a quick blessing and tossing it into the hedge. It wasn’t the grandest of ceremonies, I know, but at least I saved it the disgrace of starting its journey into the ever-after with a mad race down the sewer pipes, into a foul-smelling nether world, where the only light at the end of the tunnel is the one you’ve left behind.

——

I pondered life over lunch yesterday. But let me tell you about lunch first. With the Rayburn stove fully tanked up again, I opted for a low brow/high brow cheese-toast fest. The low brow was as you might imagine: cheddar melted onto plain white toast—no surprises there. The high brow, however, was far more interesting and tasty: thin, dark rye, a little butter, melted stilton topped with pears that had spent the morning in the fridge. The hot-cool, sweet-tangy thing worked to amazing sensory effect. If you try it at home, wash it down with half a glass of dry New Zealand white that was in the fridge from dinner the night before. Yum.

As far as life goes, I’ve been thinking about what I wrote in my last dispatch, about wanting to make a change. I’ve come here trying to change my surroundings but ultimately I think the change will have to come from within. Certainly ones surroundings play an important role in happiness. However, I think that the ability to seek out happiness, to skillfully weave it into one’s life, feels internal. And that ability, or lack thereof, follows you even to the smallest island.