Three Wishes

for Sunday Scribblings

To start, my selfish wish:

More time.

Then, I would do things like lie under a tree, gazing up at the sky. I would see my family more often, I would read more, write more, cook more, clean more. What a life I would lead if I had more time...

This picture taken on a lazy day in high summer.
View from the ground, up to the sky,
through the leaves of a magnificient Moreton Bay fig.
Orleigh Park, West End, Qld.

Wish number 2: (also selfish)

My own home. My own place.

I have always wanted my own space - when you are the youngest child of eight, you never have much that is all yours.

My own home would have idyllic contemplation space.

This is Tu Duc's reading house - Viet Nam's notable and literary emperor.
It was large enough to be my house.

Last wish -

Happiness for all my loved ones.

It's a big wish, because I have a lot of loved ones.

And I expect the wish-granter to listen to my loved one's notions of what constitutes happiness for them.

Picture taken somewhere at Ayuthaya, Thailand.
Sorry I can't be more specific - I was on a tour and completely disoriented.
I don't much like tours...

There is an excellent movie, Stalker, by brilliant Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky.

Tarkovsky is a simply brilliant film-maker.

It is sort of a science fiction movie: about a young man who works as a guide (Stalker) into a somewhat mythic world where there is a room. Every person who steps into this room has their innermost, deepest and most heartfelt wish granted. Stalker has never himself stepped into the room because he is afraid of what his innermost wish is; because, as he tells one of the current set of people he is guiding towards the room, one of his previous 'clients' stepped into the room, only to return to find - not his extremely sick brother healed, but - a pile of money.

The big question of the movie is how well you know yourself.

Would you step into this room?

Is this what wishes are about? Ourselves? When I make my three wishes - bland as they are - I am revealing to you who I really am - the things I aspire to. But what if someone else were to pluck from me my three true wishes - would they align themselves with what I wish for, for myself?

Happy Sunday.