One year later

On Monday Magne will be one year old and its hard to believe that its only been a year. It seems like he was with us forever. When I look back over this blog, I am amazed at all the things we did in recent times before he was born. A year is such a short time now, but for him, its everything he has ever known. Such is life. Today I bought new socks, tonight I ponder upon existentialism (I say tonight, its actually 2:30 in the morning and I'm wide awake).

A year ago there was no Magne, except that there was.

Every day is a treasure. Every time you open your eyes, you look upon vast beauty. Every grey sky is a cornucopia of pleasures if only you care to see them. To look however, is not to see. Seeing is the hardest thing of all, the prime skill of a good artist. Sometimes I can see, but most of the time I'm distracted, I guess I'll never be a good artist, just an illustrator. That's okay, so few really are.

Every day I go to work now, each time I move amongst people who have worked for years, and I see them in a different way. Not because working by itself has brought on some kind of clarity, but because as familiarity breeds contempt, it also breeds comprehension. Growing old is invisible, except when you see it on the people around you. Standing in a line in a posh super market (buying expensive meats and cheese for the people we expect to visit to celebrate Magne's birthday) I saw a woman, maybe five years older than me, buying two bottles of red wine. She was worn, even haggard, under make up and fur; damaged by life and alcohol. I've started to notice a lot of people like her, people close in age to myself, yet seemingly far older. I feel so much younger, then maybe that's because we had our children later in life, though it never seemed so late when I was 35, even though I knew it was.

Now, I wake up in the morning and realise, in ten years I'll be fifty! As if ten years is but the blink of an eye, but which it is, when your at the aft end of a decade. Its like it hardly happened. A year of paradise passes you by like an urban bus, gritty and grey and plastered with futile advertisements (I really hate advertising; so ultimately futile). Don't let life pass you by they say. Savour every day. That's not always easy, especially if your not used to actually seeing what your looking at.