Fly low, fly slow

Maybe it was the war parallels I wrote about yesterday but I’ve just received a phone call from someone about a new possible war-zone posting for me. It was like lying on my back on the deck of a cruise ship and suddenly feeling a shot across my chest. I told the artist about it and like to think she understood. It's not entirely out of the blue. But whenever faint possibilities become real possibilities, the heart always misses a beat. The artist went quiet after I told her. She had just returned from picking up the children and I think what she really wanted to do was revisit the large new piece on the wall, the one she's been working so hard on. Instead she entered the small open kitchen and I followed her through. She was already sitting on the stool and staring at the table with her head bowed, which isn't really her style. 'Nothing happens to any man which he is not formed by nature to bear,' Marcus Aurelius said. I wonder if it's true. The money's good and we need it. It would mean working out of an airfield, with twenty-one days on and ten days off, and I'd be in pretty good hands. At least my son is grinning, however preposterously. My daughter doesn't know yet and if I don't go, she won't. The artist is no longer in the kitchen and is back working, by the way. She knows well her husband's contradictions. (Artists have a way of understanding these things.) I wonder how I would view her journey towards an exhibition should I go? She wouldn't be too alone. The artist’s sister is here again and sleeping on the large red sofa. (Her brother and family came at the weekend.) No, the artist's family are close and it's a source of some comfort, though never an excuse, to know this strength. 'Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you,' Aldous Huxley said. Maybe it's just a wake-up call.