Sitting inside on a November day

Yesterday morning I went for a walk in company to Barangaroo instead of to Chinatown and ended up not in the park (it's such a tiny little park) but in a gelato bar having a flat white while my companion had a gelato milkshake (if there is such a thing). I caught a bit of sun, as you can see. It was a hot and sunny day and we were walking at the hottest time of the day.

I got back home today after dropping my friend off at her apartment and went back to bed to have a nap. I dreamt about my father, which is unusual. What was more unusual was that it was a civil and polite dream. Normally when I dream about him it is an anxious and disturbed dream.

He was a younger man than I am now and I was explaining to him some things about demography and the economy in Australia. I remember from the dream that he listened to what I was saying politely. I took this as proof that I have surpassed my father in some essential quality, in something like wisdom, as I enter the last stage of my life. I have become the bigger man, at least in my eyes. The lack of anxiety - which normally accompanies dreams I have where he appears, as I mentioned - serves for me as a kind of signal that I have achieved something important in life.

My blogpost of yesterday contains a few clues about where my head is these days. I have reached a kind of impasse vis-a-vis experience, and feel myself to have come to a kind of limit in life where the rewards of experience are totalled up against time served. (Excuse the penal metaphor.) The dream gave me an idea that I have reached a kind of acme of contentment and self-awareness - I am a bit afraid to talk of wisdom - beyond which it is not really possible to go.

This might be cause for some alarm. In normal circumstances. But other things that are happening tell me that I am not far off the truth. I feel quite happy with things now and would be happy to drop off the proverbial branch in the near future as long as it wasn't too painful. I guess I have my father to thank for this realisation. No doubt he served other purposes during my life. But my life has been long enough and I see no particular reason to continue it. Come what may.