Sella Yaso

The Thing It Landed On

When something lands, what did it land on?

Free to read, in full, here. Fourteen short chapters, an hour and a half altogether — and no chapter needs the one before it in the same sitting.

Somebody says your part of the work could have been tighter. Eleven words, in a meeting with another fifty minutes in it. At a quarter to ten that night you are still arranging the sentence you should have said. The same week somebody told you your spelling was a disgrace, and you laughed and fixed it.

The difference is not how bad they were. A thing can only land on you where you are standing. This book asks one question about that and nothing else. There is no programme, no vocabulary to learn, and nothing in it to be ashamed of.

  1. The question nobody answers the same way twiceThere is a question you have answered several thousand times and never once the same way twice.
  2. What landed, and what it landed onSomebody said your part of the work could have been tighter. Eleven words, in a meeting that had another fifty minutes in it.
  3. Everything here can be takenAlan was sixty-two and had been at the same firm for thirty-one years. On a Friday afternoon in March they restructured, and the job he had was no longer a…
  4. What it is forYou were about nine, and you brought something home. A report, a badge, a piece of work with a sticker on it — the object does not matter and most people…
  5. The same addressClare gave the presentation on a Thursday, and it went well, and at the end her director said something generous about it in front of eleven people, and then…
  6. The things you defend tell you where you liveIt was about a dentist appointment. Hugh had told Jan the date. He was certain he had told her, in the kitchen, on the Sunday, and she was equally certain he…
  7. Something was not touchedYou have driven home and been unable to account for the last eleven minutes of it. Everybody has.
  8. Thirty seconds, before you answerThe email arrives at twenty to five. It is four lines long and perfectly polite and there is one clause in the middle of it that goes in.
  9. Before you are anybodyTheo wakes at ten past six, a few minutes before the alarm, which he usually does. For a short while there is nothing much.
  10. Seeing it in somebody elseIt happened to Theo in a meeting about nothing, in the second week of doing any of this. Gavin did the thing Gavin does.
  11. This is not coldnessAbout nine months after he started doing this, Paul's daughter stopped telling him things. She did not announce it and there was no row.
  12. The one that does not moveTheo can do this now. He can do it on Gavin, who is still difficult. He can do it on an email about a reporting line, about a third of the time, at four…
  13. What you get, and what you do notMost of what is written about this is true and useless. Peace. Presence. Freedom from the ego. Letting go.
  14. An ordinary Tuesday, laterTheo wakes at ten past six, a few minutes before the alarm, which he still does. The grey at the edge of the curtain. The boiler.

At the back

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