We think very deeply about our lives. We are so profound, we have such depths. We think therefore we are. But what about a thought in the dark? I don't see that I am then. I need a lightbulb to know that.
Take Kevin and Harry, who were my small flatmates in Lahore. They are brothers aged 7 and 4 respectively with no access to a camera, a video camera or webcam, nor even the bathroom mirror, given their diminutive stature.
I was putting on my make-up (we see ourselves, remember) and I lowered the mirror for Harry. "Who's that, Harry?" I asked, as he looked at his reflection. "It's Kevin," he said.
He has not seen himself. He doesn't know he is.
Sometimes, before I light a light, I stumble to the door and step out into the night to see the stars and lose what's left of myself in the cosmos. The only real void is where the mountain was by day, no starlight shines through that. I contemplate distances and rootlessness, inter-planetary wandering and time-travel. Then I remember I quite like existence and don't need to add galactic loneliness to my lot so I go back in, light the lantern, rummage for a biscuit or make a chip butty - that'll weight me down some.
Tonight though, there is a moon, visible through a damp duvet of clouds so I am hemmed in, in a comforting, somewhat swaddled way and also orientated by this sky - the limit. There is up and there is down; here is east, there is west.
The cloud is also a comfort to the crops and fruit trees these days as it gently touches them with rain and makes them shine green all over. It is the season of kindness indeed. One neighbour brings me eggs, another clover; "fry and it's good" she tells me, and it is. Spring is lean on veg, but they found that. By the third bag of it, though, I'm being kind to my neighbour's pet rabbit.
A chap up the road is due to marry. His family had a foundation laying ceremony for the house he's preparing for his bride. The plans were drawn up. ("Should the windows really go behind the adjoining wall?" queried my friend.) The ground was cleared but then the work had to stop. "That peach tree-" the chap said kindly, "How can we chop it down in blossom so pink? Let's give it another year." And so his bride will wait.
The gardener in the office grounds loves creation too. You can see it in the way he handles plants and soil and splashes water. He found an ants' nest on Sunday. The pesky creatures swarmed out from under the flower pot he moved. The ground seethed with them and my skin crawled. All present leapt back horrified by the hidden fecundity of nature. Ant poison was unearthed and brandished over them. But was it a sin? Mali wanted to know. He was nervous about sprinkling it upon life. He was told it was not but felt in his heart it was, so he got a small duster and flicked some ants onto the lawn where they seemed to frolic with further abandon. "They're just like little children," he said.
I confess that though the chemist was kind and did not charge for the worm medicine, I will not be as affectionate to my parasites for a week, once a day before meals.
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There was glorious blue sky for some of our weekend trip, but only immediately overhead. All around, like a crown, there was thick cloud. "What a shame it's covering the view," I said to our boy-guide.
"What view?" he wondered.
"Of the mountains. My parents have come a long way to see them."
"Don't worry," he said, "they're the same at the top as they are at the bottom."
Now the cloud is total, pushing down heavy like a stone waiting to be rolled away. An elemental summit has been convened this evening, a meeting of earth and sky. They come together for fellowship, the clouds reaching downwards in their bulge and the mountains straining heavenwards. For weeks it has seemed something has been brewing, with cloud pouring out of craggy valleys in the high hills like steam from cauldrons. What mysteries do they communicate, what wonders do they work in their communion?
Sometimes, white reveals white as the cloud eases down or creeps to the side to reveal snow on rock behind. There is such sympathy between them as they reflect each other's colours and coldness and the attraction of weight to weight.
But mum and dad can and do see the clouds in England; we wait to see the crest of the Karakorum. Night falls and the curtain of cloud is torn in two to reveal what we've been hoping for: a display of strength and power and flashes of white from rock bottom to soaring spire.
A few hours later the sun rises and it is Easter Sunday.
