Delighted to take part in last night’s Being Made in Dumfries event. Lots of interesting work presented. Hope to get some feedback from my reading of part of the first chapter of the sequel to (The) Last Year. The main character Jane’s a real Doonhamer!
John’s university and a key setting in his back story.
Final year – Enjoy the tranquility and beauty of nature. Be still. Walk and dig the earth. See friends in small, intimate meetings. Take time to be alone.
Search for calmness and acceptance of the mystery of transcendence beyond life in human form.
So pleased to get featured in January’s D & G Life as Book of the Month!
Before starting I need to clarify the question. Do I assume a year’s grace as for Deborah? Am I retired or in employment? Am I comfortably enough off?
If I have a year’s grace and am already retired, all I think I can do is live life with slightly more intensity than before. My ordinary social life does not include concern about the fact that I am going to die. So I can’t tell anyone else except my closest: This to avoid the creation of a barrier of deception which would in any case be insecure. Also I should begin to put in place important practical arrangements for the dying stage. When that comes, that’s the time to tell.
I don’t have a bucket or other list. In fact, we all should recognise that we have an unspecified period of life grace followed by an unspecified period of dying. Is this not really the same formula as the one that Deborah was responding to: It’s just that in her case the time periods were less uncertain and probably shorter. Whatever the circumstances then, the big question for me is whether I will feel content to die: Will I feel that I have lived a sufficient life, or spent my time in the wings waiting for a cue to come on? I’m not going to be able to change the facts of that to any significant extent in my period of grace. More likely I would spend some time reviewing and reinterpreting my story to produce the desired answer.
I would spend as much time as is practical visiting old friends and haunts. I would want to climb a mountain or two, selected in terms of character and my history rather than size. I wonder if I would get satisfaction from some craft activity. Too late to learn a lot, but worth a try. I would expect to seek and find other simple sensual pleasures, quiet rather than hedonistic. And that’s it, I think. Is that all there is?
The Louisville waterfront from Indiana: a key section of the novel takes place here.
‘I have no wish to sky dive or to swim with dolphins. I like my life and if this were the last year or the thirty from last year, I think I would live it in the same way. Of course the passing of all the lasts – seasons, meetings, sporting fixtures, sunsets – would give the year unimaginable, and often unbearable, intensity.’
“Ride more.
Rome.
New York.
Isle of Skye.”
“As I get older and think the end is closer, I intend to follow my instincts and desires more and quicker – not waiting for the future because there is a lot less of it for me.”
“Swim with dolphins.
Live in a camper van.
WORLD PEACE
Yoga retreat for a month, with detoxing and swimming in the sea!
Sort out all the stuff in the drawers (junk) and streamline and become a minimalist.”