Ignis Fatuus or an untitled rambling

From time to time I hear a phrase or a line from a song or poem that seems to capture a feeling that has until then been eerily resistant to being minimized into mere text. This past Christmas I was particularly aware of a poignant feeling lurking in the back of my mind. A realization that life was no longer as simple as I had hoped it would be when I was a child. The complexity is mostly created by a very simple principle. I cannot be in more than one place at a time. This little fact has begun to manifest itself again and again in the past few years. This year I was particularly aware of this as close friends and family were either briefly inserted into a busy schedule or missed altogether.

The other day I heard John Thaw reciting a line from Hilarie Belloc's The South Country. To avoid boring you with all of the poem, I will simply quote the final lines.

If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.

I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.

Hopefully, one day when I am old and grey, I will have the chance to sit on a porch or in a fishing boat with old friends and leisurely tell stories and lies about the old days. Until then, I suppose that I will have to experience some life in order to embellish future stories to an acceptable level of entertainment.