There is a significant difference, as I discovered last week, between the meaning of these two phrases. I think that it is no exaggeration to say that I have been down with the worst cough I have ever experienced. The constant hacking at my lungs left me feeling weak and without the ability to engage very much with anything. “Survival” was the name of the game. Its was very difficult, however, just to be content with such a low level of activity because we have committed ourselves to moving house in the near future, and it was necessary at least to get the place into a minimal level of orderliness so that we could commission a house agent. I managed it in the end, particularly as the worst of my symptoms eased.
Although, during this period of enforced inertia, it could be said that I was “doing nothing” very much, it was certainly not the case that “nothing was happening”. I was compelled to think a great deal about the place in which we have lived for a quarter of a century, and what it has come to mean to me. I have been aware, ever since the prospect of removal was broached, that this is going to be a difficult process for me. Then it occurred to me that I might begin some artistic project which might serve as a continuing reminder of my attachment to the place.
One of the glories of the house is the annual blooming of a large magnolia. (I think it is the variety called magnifolia”, and rightly so because of its spectacular blossoms.) I decided to synthesise a composition depicting these blooms, from some photographs I took some time ago, and a few days ago I began work on this, in soft pastel. My intention is that this will accompany me wherever I should go, as a permanent souvenir of our years here. In many respects it has been an uneventful week, during which I have been taking life as quietly as I can get away with. Certainly it has not been true, however, to say that “nothing was happening”.