Lots of driftwood out there, he said, gesturing toward the windswept beach. think I’ll get a load for my fireplace.
I stared at him. “you’re going to chop wood? on this sort of afternoon?”
He gave me a quizzical look. “why not?’’ he said as he set off across the dunes. “It’s better than practicing the deadly art of non-living, isn’t it?”
I watched him with the sudden odd feeling that something was curiously inverted in the proper order of things: two youngsters were content to sit by the fire; an old man was striding off jauntily into an icy wind. “Wait!” I heard myself calling.
“Wait, I’m coming!”
A small episode, to be sure. We chopped some armfuls of wood. We got a bit wet, but not cold. There was a kind of exhilaration about it all, the ax blade biting into the weathered logs, the chips flying, the sea snarling in the background. But what really stuck in my mind was that phrase about the deadly art of non-living.
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