Peace/piece of (my) heart/mind - delete as appropriate

Today started out as one of those days when my mind is sorely aware of the hyper-reality messages existence seems to be sending me. There was the inevitable cliché of one magpie, in flight, from my balcony, right past my balcony, level to my balcony, in fact, and I had to greet it and salute it. (Later in the day, I saw another solitary in-flight magpie, from the balcony at work, and I greeted and saluted it, too, but together they make two, so I didn't really need to.)

From the bus window, just before getting off in town to go to work, I saw a child at the window of one of the old town houses. How lovely, it struck me, because these days so few people live in the heart of town in the old buildings, they have all been converted to this and that and the other, mainly offices, how lovely to see a person, and not just any person - a child, a resident of one the old town houses, at his window. Think what it was like, I thought, when people lived there, and looked out of the windows (in the evening, I thought, for some reason, although it was morning when I thought it), to see what went on, on their street, because they had more time for that then and it was good for entertainment. Just as I was thinking this, in the split-second it takes for a thought process to go several paragraphs, the mental image changed into the residents looking out of their windows, during the war years, fearing air raids. Wtf? Where did that come from? And why? And why can't I let lie, why does the next thing I see have to be a naff and garish advert for downhill ski-ing package holidays in the rapidly-to-be-destroyed Lapland, where - rejoice, rejoice, residents of our poor and deprived north - not only us southern affluent folk but also "real" Europeans are beginning to flock to, in increasing numbers, because they aren't getting enough snow anymore in the Alps (we aren't, either, here in the south). And yesyesyes, I know downhill ski-ing is fun and exhilarating, I have tried it once or twice, it is, and we need fun and exhilaration because we don't know how to enjoy anything else these days (we=mankind, here, not you and me in particular), although sinking into the environment, becoming one with the background (yes) that is existence itself, is bliss. What need have we for bliss?

And finally, I saw something I see quite often on my morning trundle - pigeons, drinking from a puddle which often collects in a particular dent in the pavement at the top of the block of my workplace, and why in God's sweet name am I always, without failure, moved by the sight of pigeons drinking from a puddle (it seems meaningful and symbolic of something, and I am reminded here of how thousands of years ago augurs used to read the meaning of life and the intentions of the cosmos from the flight of pigeons, although they did use sheep's entrails, too, which I don't see on my way to work, which is just as well)? What sort of an effing dork am I?

But then, I was almost at work, and had to buckle up and stop receiving cosmic messages of little worth and even less meaning, because people tend to take it all funny if they think (or realise) that's what you're doing. When I came home, I lit candles in my four little squat coloured-glass candle holders and started to work on writing this post, and yes, what the fuck has this been all about?