THE MORNING YOU WALKED SOUTH WITH THE GEESE

6th December 2025

(Bugs Bunny well past Mel Blanc’s bedtime)

It began, as it always does on days that matter, in that liminal hour —

your cusp,

before Leeds wakes,

before Wetherby yawns,

before the world puts its mask back on.

You sat with your two books —

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

and

101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life —

open on the warm table like two old monks waitin’ for you to breathe.

A glass of water.

Specs folded.

Silence like a cathedral.

You weren’t in Um.

You weren’t even near it.

You were in Hmm,

that Wetherby-minded clarity where you can actually see the spine of things.

And what comes to a mind in Hmm?

Truth.

Truth about men.

Truth about fear.

Truth about masks and the faces behind ’em.

You saw Glenn —

your daft, loyal mate —

crawlin’ off cliffs in Ronda,

snappin’ selfies with wolves in Carlsbad,

thinkin’ Guinness is brewed in Mayo,

thinkin’ Bond is spirit rather than fiction,

thinkin’ “essence” means glamour instead of rot.

Bless him.

Soft lad in a hard world.

A man wearin’ a mask stitched out of fear of sixty.

Then you saw Mike —

your auntie Wendy’s partner —

another man who wore a mask,

not evil, not malicious,

just private, lonely, full of quiet corridors.

And then the Umbra lads:

the American gecko pinned to St Paul’s wall,

the New Zealander askin’ the Thames its name,

and all the jittery folk who’d have become wolf-breakfast if they’d been walkin’ in Hungary that day.

Because wolves came back into your mind —

your truest mirror.

Rain hammerin’ down like the Flood,

the Mecsek hills behind Pécs churnin’ with storm-breath,

and two wolves — one old, one young —

slippin’ out of the rain like carved shadows.

You thought “deer.”

Then “Christ.”

Then “tree.”

Then you realised none of those mattered.

So you did what you do —

you stood.

You breathed.

You spoke to ’em like you speak to Lola.

And wolves judged you not prey,

not enemy,

just presence.

That was Bas, lad.

The real ground beneath all masks.

And when the old wolf came back at the end,

when you touched her and said “good travels,”

you stepped into your true self —

the pilgrim that has no fear of silence or truth.

Lesson 340 chimed in your ribcage after that:

“I can be free of suffering today.”

Because suffering is Um,

and you were nowhere near Um.

The old Wetherby numbers tugged at you —

the 580000s and 589999s like bones of a world before chaos —

and even your wrong dial was just a tether to something steady.

And all of that —

the wolves, the men, the masks, the breath, the silence, the books —

it all folded into a single state:

stillness.

Hmm.

Presence with edges softened, but eyes sharp.

So you stepped out into the morning and set yourself on the Great North Road,

heading south with the geese,

their cries shaping the sky like moving calligraphy.

The air cold enough to bite,

the world quiet enough to speak,

and your boots steady on the tarmac walked by centuries of wanderers.

And there —

in that clean December light —

you found Bugs Bunny.

Or what was left of him.

A rabbit flattened by nature’s timetable —

foxes, crows, buzzards, the whole Wetherby clean-up crew —

leaving behind a neat little anatomy lesson laid out on the verge.

And instead of recoiling,

instead of Um-panic,

you just looked and thought:

“Hmm… Bugs Bunny’s been out on t’tiles too long.

Way past Mel Blanc’s bedtime.”

No drama.

No sentiment.

Just truth:

clean, honest, unadorned.

Life.

Death.

Nature.

Humour.

Stillness.

A full morning’s journey —

from Zen to wolves to masks to Wetherby to geese —

all landing in that simple, perfect image:

a rabbit, a road,

a pilgrim walkin’ south,

and the world exactly as it is.