Entry

 

Do whatever your hand finds to do and don’t take thought for the morrow. Open the curtains on a grey dawn. Dribble dries for the cat into a bowl and place near his nose. Turn on the heater to warm rooms for breakfast. Listen to magpies outside in the street. Find a little paper cup in which to count out daily medication list of pills, exact milligrams of thinners and straighteners and reducers. Stack up last night’s dishes ready to wash sometime this morning, those grimy plates. Toast the toast, percolate the coffee. Read the emails but more importantly delete hundreds in bulk deletes, it has to be done, just do it. Write a comforting email in response to the bad health news in a friend’s incoming message. Write an email explaining the tight workplace arrangements to a potential volunteer. Smile at the fact the major news politicians promised this morning from the capital will be available in the fullness of time. Tidy remains of a manuscript draft into one stack, ready to resume in maybe a month’s time, if that is the fullness of time. Read Etty Hillesum’s wartime diaries with delight and consolation. Find Etty quotes on empathy and love to use in a zoom paper. Walk down to the pharmacy at the Village to buy the next repeat of an unpronounceable medication. Talk to the pharmacist about his hay fever, about which he can do nothing when it gets really full-on. Buy bread from the little supermarket and chat with the woman at the register. Breathe in fresh air made fresher by strong winds. Test lung capacity as a hillside path approaches and learn your limits, young man. Do whatever your hand finds to do and don’t take thought for the morrow. Admire how wattle in bloom hangs like a bright yellow cloud over a paling fence along a blowy street, even better even than Clarice Beckett even. Pick up a couple of empty throwaway coffee cups dancing circles on a concrete path. Place cups in a public waste bin. Make vocabulary notes about shapes of native flowers up on Hilltop Avenue. Do whatever your hand finds to do and don’t take thought for the morrow. Prepare ham toasties for lunch with a half dozen or so pitted olives. Read online comments  and make helpful comments about same-sex marriage and secret portfolios. Retire for the mandatory afternoon siesta recommended by physios. Wake later and do the washing up, all of it now. Sit outside in the sun, feel good. Pinch out broad bean heads. Do whatever your hand finds to do and don’t take thought for the morrow. Read more Etty. Write inspired account of the day so far based on entry in Etty Hillesum’s Diaries for Monday morning the 20^th of October 1941 in occupied Amsterdam, itself inspired by the line at Ecclesiastes 9:10. Admit it’s not as compact as Etty’s entry. For there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom where you are going after death.