Vigil: Day VIII

So I started this series of posts with the somewhat pretentious intention to contrast the tree death watch with the inanity of my day to day worries, but I find I've become bored, not with the death watch, but with my day to day inanities, which is probably a good sign. They are suspended until further notice. 

 

 A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea. In other words, we fear that by that time he will be, in the common but hideously significant phrase, another man. Now, it is this horrible fairy tale of a man constantly changing into other men that is the soul of the Decadence. That John Paterson should, with apparent calm, look forward to being a certain General Barker on Monday, Dr. Macgregor on Tuesday, Sir Walter Carstairs on Wednesday, and Sam Slugg on Thursday, may seem a nightmare; but to that nightmare we give the name of modern culture.

G. K. Chesterton, A Defense of Rash Vows