Dear Pogue,

Right back at the start, in our first exchange of correspondence, words on paper, ink, messy finger prints (what would a letter be without a blotch or two?) uneven margins, you remember? Well we committed to our own personal attempt at a revolution. One that we would have for fun, spurred on and encouraged by D.H.Lawrence:

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,

Don’t do it in ghastly seriousness,

Don’t do it in deadly earnest,

Do it for fun.

A Sane Revolution.

There was a man who challenged the status quo, the lines of the acceptable, who heralded the winds of change and lived on the edges working out his own “cool”.

Well, I feel we need to renew our commitment to the revolution and the fun we want to go on having. You’ll remember that we recently wrote to each other about Jonathon Livingstone Seagull, Jon Boy to his friends, and how he strived to turn the mundane repetitiveness of life into something plump with meaning? Something that had the potential to touch on enlightenment? That’s where we need to be! That’s the essence of the revolution. The challenge to social constraints, the desire to fill routine with a new energy and banish the mundane from life. We can lead with: “Guys, life is far more than they told you about” (let them work out who “they” are). “As someone said: ‘You weren’t born to pay bills and die’”.

We’ve both had a fair dose of religion in our time so let’s go to our religious institutions and show them we can do it better. Let’s call them out to show us the difference, show us the Great Beyond. And we’ll show them that the revolution is about more than words, so much more than words.

We’ll smile as we tell people that there is far more potential, excitement, joy and fulfilment to be found in life.

Let me tell you a secret. I don’t tell people this. Partly because there’s a good number who would think me crazy and, partly because I have sort of treasured this over the years. Turned it over in my mind and found something special in it again and again. So I have feared that by sharing it there will be some who treat it cheaply and that would hurt.

Some years back I went to a safari park. Not a wide open African Savannah type, but the oversized zoo type. Eventually, as I moved through it, I came to an aquarium because no Savannah would be complete without a dolphin or two. Anyway, I sat to watch the show and by way of trying to make us all feel good about the park the trainer explained how well the dolphins were treated. Their tanks were vast with millions of gallons of water and the creatures were so at home that they were now breeding and two calves had recently been born.

In that instant I was struck and a voice ran through my head, so much so that I have carried this down the years (you can see why I didn’t share this story before…obviously an absolute fruit cake!). The voice said: “How ever good their situation appears, they were not created for this. They were not born to live in captivity but to roam in oceans.” And the kicker. “This is how most people live, in captivity not aware that they were created for so much more”.

Take a moment.

Put the letter down and just listen with your spirit. What you need to hear isn’t any longer in my words.

In fact, I’m going to stop, put the letter in the envelope and post it. I’ll write again tomorrow, maybe.

Yours, just listening,

Wic.