It was not just the drink, though, that was making
me happy, but the tenderness of things, the simple goodness of the
world. This sunset, for instance, how lavishly it was laid on, the
clouds, the light on the sea, that heartbreaking, blue-green distance,
laid on, all of it, as if to console some lost suffering wayfarer.
I
have never really got used to being on this earth. Sometimes I think our
presence here is due to a cosmic blunder, that we were meant for
another planet altogether, with other arrangements, and other laws, and
other, grimmer skies.
I try to imagine it, our true place, off on the
far side of the galaxy, whirling and whirling. And the ones who were
meant for here, are they out there, baffled and homesick, like us? No,
they would have become extinct long ago. How could they survive, these
gentle earthlings, in a world that was meant to contain us?
