PS to my last: a nightmare project

From my notebook this morning: @ 6.30 I wake from a dream. I've been hired to work on a huge project in a vast atrium with futuristic architecture and split levels. mostly open plan like a crazy palace. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I've had no meaningful interaction with anyone—they're all…

I Can’t Write Like That Any More

My wife and I decided to "drop out" in 1970. The trigger was our friend Dudley Hargreaves, who'd spent his time since leaving university at a kibbutz in Israel, where they held everything in common and had little use for money, if I remember correctly. Having nowhere to stay in England, he dropped by for…

Some posts from 2008

https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/boundless/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/dress-code/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/the-snowdrop-garden/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/belonging/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/bus-station/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/ant-slug/  

Posts from 2007

https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2007/12/01/elemental-2/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/not-doing-and-not-writing/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/preferring-the-old-telephones/

A poem from Scot

Going through old posts I looked at Memory's Carillon. There were some very nice comments including this poem by Scot. for vincent one too many of us spend our lives running running to find that perfect job that equals that perfect life never crossing the finish line finding the running never wins the race few…

Letters From Babylon, 14th Jan to 10th Feb 2007

https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2007/01/24/mission-to-babylon/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2007/03/07/renouncing-the-partial/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2007/02/12/exposed-hanging-on/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2007/02/10/witchcraft/  

Four More Rescued Posts

If only I could write like this today ... https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/dreaming-of-paris/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/in-memory-of-george-whitman-1913-2011/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/capturing-the-moment/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/life-illusion/

Rescued From the Past — 3

https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/climb-the-lowest-mountain/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/hope/  

More Posts Rescued from the past

https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/panspermia/ https://rochereau.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/scintillating-scotoma/  

Eternity in the City

Another reconstructed post: original is here [This was written in the early Nineties and published on a website, before the dawn of blogs.] Cloistered all day, I had forgotten once again that an outside world existed. In a windowless office I saw no seasons, no day, no night. There was only harsh lighting, never switched…

The Panicky Sheep (Life’s Predicament)

Originally posted on 4th January 2010, corrupted since, now restored Woke up this morning to recall that it’s my first ordinary day for weeks. I've emerged from a season of interruptedness, in which celebration took the form of reuniting with family; not all at once in a single gathering but serially; noting my kinship and…

Three Love Sonnets

Please share your thoughts. Which do you like best or least, and why? My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked,…

Diagnosis: it’s a Love Song

We went to the Diagnostic and Musculo-Skeletal Clinic this morning, known as MSK and often pronounced Music.   My beloved has a chronic pain in her shoulder from straining to lift a heavy sofa months ago.  While I was in the reception area I read the poetry book I'd brought along and hit on the one…

Liking or commenting

Back in the day, there were usually comments on my posts, e.g. the one on the Book of Gilgamesh, which had 50, and  Time Consumes, Art Distils , which had 12. These days there are no comments, only Likes, by bloggers I'm following or have seen my posts on Facebook, Instagram or X Twitter. You'll notice…

Our Front Yard

as it looked on May 2nd 2022 I've finally got round to fixing the bench in our front yard. It's made of decking planks supported on 3 brick pillars. It's comfortable: you can lean back and rest your back on he windowsill. I built it ten years ago, and the pillars have periodically broken as…

The Phoenix Trail

first published on 17th Feb 2011, photos restored today The trail largely follows the route of a disused railway line, the Wycombe Railway, which connected Princes Risborough and Thame with the city of Oxford. The line through Thame remained open until 1991 to serve an oil depot based in the town. (Wikipedia) It's open to pedestrians, horses,…

The Naked Ape

This was published on 15th December 2018. It's another post rescued from perpetual-lab.blogspot.com, which no longer exists. There's a determinedly atheistic* elite of do-gooders who care more about “the planet” than those who fall foul of their holier-than-thou values. Prime example: President Macron of France had imposed a carbon tax on fuel to help save…

First published on September 25th 2011, rescued from oblivion today Some days are special gifts but it takes something else, some extra gift to be able to share them. When I say days, I mean moments within days. And when I say special, I refer to some magic visible only to the inner eye. A…

The Charabanc of Trippers

previously published 13th May 2014 on Perpetual-Lab, somehow lost in transit I didn’t explain what happened to the book Wayfaring, which was briefly published under Creative Commons in pdf, before being withdrawn from free distribution. I feel no compulsion to give a reason, but here are two. (a) Uncertainty (b) a decision to postpone publication…

To Laurence Ferlinghetti

previously published on 20th May 2014, lost and restored today This is for you, dear poet of my youth, still 23 years and 21 days older than me (therefore 95), still here with the rest of us, enabling me to write this with a possibility it might reach you. I would say I’ve admired you…

Along the Phoenix trail

Originally published on 25th Feb 2011, before the photos got corrupted. Now restored It was the most spring-like day this year and the urge to be out in it without delay overcame lengthy consideration of where to go. I considered the Phoenix trail to be unfinished business (see post before last) because I hadn’t walked…

Then and Now continued

Dress Female Dress (1890 edition) It is well known that a loose and easy dress contributes much to give the sex the fine proportions of body that are observable in the Grecian statues, and which serve as models to our present artists, nature being too much disfigured among us to afford any such. The Greeks…

Enquire Within: Then and now

This morning one of the houses on Green Street left an open cardboard box full of books. only one was of interest to me: Enquire Within, by Moyra Bremner. I helped myself as intended by the owner. That's what we do round here. I've left things out myself on occasion, they don't stay long. I've…

The Golden Ball

Originally published on September 9th 2010, but got corrupted somewhere. Now restored to its original form  

Martin Buber, I and Thou (yes, you’re invited)

Transcribed verbatim from a 9-page manuscript which I found on a bookshelf while looking for something else. It was written in early 2017, not long after I'd been diagnosed with CLL—Chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and before treatment with chemotherapy, which didn't work for me. For the last seven years I've been taking a daily pill (ibrutinib)…

It’s All a Work in Progress . . .

(originally published in Blogger on 16th February 2017) . . all bar the Eternal, which simply smiles. This is what happened to my recent post "All Actual Life is Encounter" Feb 1st: I started drafting the post , after arriving home from a trip to the Island. Feb 9th: published. Feb 11th: added a category…

Don’t Give Up

Google is spooky. How did my phone know I'd yesterday published a post on an impassioned song of Peter Gabriel? And then tell me a recent story from American Songwriter? It's republished here, What is “Don’t Give Up” about? What inspired Gabriel to write it? And who was Gabriel’s unexpected original choice for a duet…

Stuff Coming Out, Stuff Going in

I have a spiritual relationship with Peter Gabriel, as I've written about here. In the last couple of years he's been working on a new album, I/O Here's the lyrics for the video above: I'm just a part of everything I stand on two legs and I learned to sing It's not what was said…

Our Trip to Brussels in 2016

On 22 March 2016, two coordinated terrorist attacks in and close to Brussels, Belgium, were carried out by the Islamic State (IS). Two suicide bombers detonated bombs at Brussels Airport in Zaventem just outside Brussels, and one detonated a bomb on a train leaving Maelbeek/Maelbeek metro station in the European Quarter of Brussels. Thirty-two people…

Who was Fernando Pessoa?

Here are three fragments posthumously found in his trunk: I've reached the point where tedium is a *person, the incarnate fiction of my own company The outer world exists like an actor on stage: it's there but is something else. ... and everything is an incurable illness. The indolence of feeling, the frustration of never…

The Book of Disquiet, continued . . .

I've here chosen some excerpts from my Kindle version of the complete manuscripts found in the trunk in his Lisbon apartment after his death. The Richard Zenith paperback version makes careful selections, and it's easy to find examples worth reproducing by turning real pages. I had a first go at it in my earlier post.…

My New Blog

See it here. It's a selection of posts from Wayfarer's Notes over the years. I've focused on travel abroad, such as one of our trips to Jamaica, or to Amsterdam but there are some early posts as well, e.g.  Spring is Sprung, Time Consumes, Art Distils Let me know what you think, in comments there…

The Book of Disquiet . . .

. . . to be continued in my next Fernando Pessoa's book is my favourite of all time, and I'd like to share with you some of the things I love his writing for and revere the man, not just the author, for his profound insights about life, the world and everything. He achieved this…

He Wasn’t OK

To be OK, according to Thomas Harris, we need to understand the nature of our "transactions" with others. Well, for starters, I totally disagree with that. Setting that aside, we need to understand how he so confidently reaches this decision. Having set myself this task, I find his book to be unnecessarily long and tedious,…

Lucid Waking

first published on 15th March 2017 I see things as imbued with meaning, like fragments written in a foreign language. Sometimes I can decipher them; sometimes even put them in English. For instance, from my bedroom window I can see the Victorian factory opposite. I wake as the early sun catches its gable ends. As…

my turn to write something

108                                              Friday 22nd March 3.55 am Woke a while ago. Calm, interested in what is going on —find words that fit. Settle on "The Accidental Encounter". So powerful and evocative as the title…

Bullets, Bach, Bubbles and Babies

Any system you contrive without us will be brought down We warned you before and nothing that you built has stood Hear it as you lean over your blueprint Hear it as you roll up your sleeve Hear it once again Any system you contrive without us will be brought down You have your drugs…

On Being the Villain

The Newly Pressed Suit, by Roger McGough Here is a poem for the two of us to play Choose any part from the following: The hero The heroine The bedroom The bed The newly pressed suit (I will play THE VILLAIN) The poem begins this evening at a poetry reading where the hero and the…

from The Energy of Slaves . . .

O darling (as we used to say) you are wide-hipped and kind I'm glad we ran off together We are not exactly young but there is still some pleasure to be squeezed from these leather bags Even as we lie here in Acapulco not quite in each others' arms several young monks walk single-file through…

A Passenger’s Dream Bus Conductress

by Liverpool poet Roger McGough She is as beautiful as bustickets and smells of old cash drinks Guinness off duty eats sausage and mash but like everyone else she has her busdreams too when the peakhour is over and there's nothing to do. A fourposter upstairs a jukebox inside there are more ways than one…

The great loves of Leonard Cohen’s life

In a mood of heightened awareness, I went down to lay the table for breakfast and asked Alexa, robotic woman with a Canadian accent, to play songs by this great gentleman genius, born in Quebec. This is copied from CBC music, as written by  @_AndreaWarner Cohen's charisma was part prophecy (he claimed to be a…

Pastures new

Cousin Fiona from near the top drawer Is a blue blood donor and Kensington bore. A moderate showjumper plain and weakwilled Cousin Fiona is never fulfilled. For what she wants but will never admit is a man to take her by the bit. Someone to jog with snog with Look in her eyes canter banter…

Rain Stops Play . . .

. . . if we're talking cricket; or "let's take a rain-check", if baseball is your game: Today is not a day for adultery The sky is a wet blanket Being shaken in anger. Thunder Rumbles through the streets Like malicious gossip. Take my advice; braving The storm will not impress your love When you…

Who was the Naughty Girl?

Who was the naughty girl I saw combing her hair with a bluebell Who was the naughty girl I saw paying her fare with a seashell Who was the naughty girl I saw sawing the seesaw in two Who reported Dr Barnardo to the NSPCC Peter Scott to the RSPB Who sent the Pope a…

From Nan’s Notebook

see https://sayitnow.wordpress.com/   Let’s Change the Subject February 29, 2024 Nan God, Religiongod is a crutch, supernatural entity, the attributes of god, who is god really I am so SICK … SICK … SICK of politics!!!!! ESPECIALLY news/posts/comments/editorials/etc. about TRUMP!!! I want to stay positive about the state of our country, but the news media and a countless number of blogs won’t…

The Ideal Man

on the first of March 2024 Woke up this morning feelin' fine There's something special on my mind Last night I met a new girl in the neighborhood, whoa yeah Something tells me I'm into something good (Herman's Hermits) We finished our usual morning tea but not the crossword, as you  can see. Feel free…

Knowledge of Angels

. . . by Jill Paton Walsh Some readers will find there is altogether too much theology in this novel, especially of the medieval kind, with inquisitors, hermit scholars, narrow-minded nuns and much repression of thought and action. After first reading it 25 years ago and re-reading recently, I get a different impression: that it’s…

Sunday Morning Crossword

In bed with our cups of tea, we take it in turns to fill in the answers, mine marked with a slash and hers with a tick. It's one of the best games you can play in bed while sitting side by side; evenly matched today. By the bye, I've been invited to write a…

The Random Kindness of Strangers

Wishing to repay the generosity he encountered during his journeys, George Whitman founded his bookstore in 1951 with the motto “be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise” and threw open the doors to all sorts of writers, artists, and intellectuals who sought refuge. I went to Lidl this morning to buy…

children’s photos (plus a grandchild)

      1973 Tristan (dressed as if wounded), Judy, Patti Dorman & her 2 children, plus a third child holding William (5) & Catherine (1) in High Wycombe, 1990     

A Midwinter Night’s Dream

I originally posted this elsewhere on Feb 13, 2023 I meet this wild girl at a strange event, outdoors and indoors, it keeps changing like a chameleon. At first it’s just a place where people are gathered, like a town square in Italy, with café tables open day and night till late. It’s all well-mannered…

Delicious, Not Precious

Previously posted on Finnegan's. May 11, 2020, updated here From the Church Times 02 MAY 2014 DR DENISE INGE, who died on 20 April, aged 51, was an author, academic, and adventurer who grew up in a "large and rambunctious" family, the descendants of Mennonite settlers, on the east coast of America. She crossed the…

“Eccentric and Mediocre” – a Moment Captured in Time

  Originally drafted 7th January 2007 on "perpetual-lab" in Blogger and never  published there.  Sometimes I wonder if I’ve chosen eccentricity as an alternative spiritual path. I was encouraged down this track by reading John Cowper Powys, who I consider to be the greatest novelist in English of the twentieth century, despite being hardly known.…

– but if a look should april me . . .

. . . a poem by e.e. cummings, and if you perceive typos below be sure they're exactly what he wrote and published darling!because my blood can sing And dance(which does with each your least your any most very amazing now or here)let pitiless fear play host to every isn’t that’s under the spring -…

may i feel said he

another poem by e e cummings

an american speaks about hungary in 1956

THANKSGIVING (1956) a monstering horror swallows this unworld me by you as the god of our fathers' fathers bows to a which that walks like a who but the voice-with-a-smile of democracy announces night & day `all poor little peoples that want to be free just trust in the u s a' suddenly uprose hungary…

A Voice Through a Cloud—2

Here are some more pages, copied for our enjoyment of Denton Welch's fictional autobiography. I can copy more if I get positive comments. "Likes" are easy bribes to get readers to visit their sites. (Nothing wrong with that: Google needs dollars so as to offer its magnificent search engine free.) He began quietly to X-ray…

A Voice Through a Cloud—1

This book is one of my favourites of all time. bought another copy and enjoyed re-reading it when recently confined to my hospital bed. The first time I read it I believed it was all true, and marvelled at the detailed precision of his memories. There's nothing in the book that indicates otherwise, until you…

“response to Gentle eye’s comments” – further update

Previously written in early July '23 in a rough and ready form, a few days before  admission to Stoke Mandeville Hospital/ Extensively corrected today, with additional material . "Much dependence on morphine, codeine, paracetamol and tramadol. "What I said about convalescent home and part time nurse was a disguise of the facts. Dunno why. Oh…

Tirade against the Cretinocracy

Reading this book has helped liberate me from an obscure species of writer's block: see my underlinings below. It's also fun to read an iconoclast who likes to break the rules of what's currently acceptable to say: see the paragraph at bottom in burnt orange. Bu I wouldn't dream of imitating him outside these four…

Traherne 3, by Denise Inge

Edited from this article in the Church Times The poetry of Thomas Traherne (written sometime before his death in 1674) has often seemed purely and innocently devotional in comparison with that of George Herbert, John Donne, or Richard Crashaw, poets whose religious work, at least occasionally, is sexually explicit. ‘Until recently’, Denise Inge comments in…

Thomas Traherne 2, by Frances Towers

Childhood and education Traherne’s writing powerfully recreates both the innocence of his infancy, in which he was ‘Entertained like an Angel with the Works of GOD’, and his fall, as he was ‘made to learn the Dirty Devices of this World’ (Centuries, 3.2, 3). His experience was paralleled by that of Hereford; the royalist city,…

Thomas Traherne Centuries, 1

Author’s inscription on the first leaf of CENTURIES OF MEDITATIONS This book unto the friend of my best friend As of the wisest Love a mark I send, That she may write my Maker’s prais therin And make her self thereby a Cherubin. An empty book is like an Infant’s Soul, in which anything may…

Museum Without Walls . . .

. . . by Jonathan Meades Just reading the first couple of pages inspires this blogger who isn't much read these days, and whose orange notebooks are not read by anybody—except perhaps their author, once in a while

Not what we were taught at school …

"Eureka!" Now he can't wait to tell the world

Confession of an Inky-fingered writer

Iwasgoing to throwaway my keyboardbut it still works if you hit the spacebar near the middle. A good way to slow down and think what you write. I'mobsessed with fountain pens. This more than anything else is probably my reason for scribbling voluminous notes in dozens of  orange notebooks in a near-illegible style. There’s also…

A Little Lower than the Angels

Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him.…

The Testament of Light (1)

PREFACE In this anthology, though for the sake of convenience it bears another title, the thread of an earlier argument is resumed: the three sentences of Chekhov which closed the first volume provide the prelude to the second. The Pattern of Courtesy differs from The Testament of Light not in spirit or general aim, but somewhat in…

The Pattern of Courtesy

Gerald Bullett was born in London  . . . and educated at Jesus College, Cambridge. During the Second World War he worked for the BBC in London, and after the war was a radio broadcaster. Bullett also contributed to the Times Literary Supplement. Politically, Bullett described himself as a "liberal socialist" and claimed to detest…

Freud and superstition

I'm cataloguing my bookshelves, and was attracted to this one by its cover showing cards from the Tarot pack. Just as I was  years ago when I bought it from a stall in the Old Amersham Market. The author quotes Freud in these words: Our patient was to a high degree superstitious, and this although…

Gratitude

I am now face to face with dying, but I am not finished with living. Foreword IN THIS QUARTET OF ESSAYS, written in the last two years of his life, Oliver Sacks faces aging, illness, and death with remarkable grace and clarity. The first essay, "Mercury," written in one sitting just days before his eightieth…

Awakenings, Part 2

This is my favourite piece of writing ever. I make no apologies for reproducing it here in full, but give thanks to the the copyright holder Oliver Sacks, © 1985, who died in 2015. Rebecca was no child when she was referred to our clinic. She was nineteen, but, as her grandmother said, 'just like…

Awakenings

Last night we watched Awakenings on Netflix: a moving portrait of inmates in a secure mental hospital in the Bronx. Dr Sayers, pictured below with his patient after successful treatment, plays the part of neurologist Oliver Sacks. The inmates are all suffering from encephalitis lethargica, a mysterious disease  described in Wikipedia as attacking the brain,…

International Strips

English Childhood Comics, from Mine to Yours

 

For Elderly Readers, to explain to your Grandchildren

 

Speak to us of Carpeting

 

The Practice of Compassion

originally published on Wednesay 9th September 2014 The hotel where we stayed in Dublin stands on a crossroads. Facing it are: The Patriots Inn The Richmond Tower, gateway to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) the Kilmainham Gaol. We arrived on foot from our house in England, aided by 2 buses and a plane…

Visit to Dalkey in 2014

  "The James Joyce Tower and Museum is a Martello tower in Sandycove, Dublin, where James Joyce spent six nights in 1904.[1] The opening scenes of his 1922 novel Ulysses take place here, and the tower is a place of pilgrimage for Joyce enthusiasts, especially on Bloomsday. Admission is free. The novel starts like this:…

Running a Half Marathon?

I just sent my son this  book for his 58th birthday. from the Oldie Magazine "The propensity for humans to intentionally put themselves through pain never ceases to amaze. Whilst the pursuit of euphoria through physical exertion is a noble one, the fact the attitude persists in a society which encourages, nay endorses, convenience and…

The Mysterious Stranger in Gerrards Cross

Here's a post from Bedroom 42 I thought worth a revisit: The Secret Life of Strangers  

Working for Volt Delta Europe Ltd

As an American company, VoltDelta didn't  just have Dress Down On Friday, it had Donut Day, not just on June 4th but every Friday. One fresh doughnut, English style, per employee.  As a newbie I was told where to queue up. Invariably there were some not in the office that day, or didn't want them,…

High Voltage

I was working under contract to an American company Volt Delta between June and August 1997. I wouldn't have remembered these dates had it not been for an extraordinary phenomenon just yards from our door in High Street, Egham, Surrey. There was a round wooden bench, big enough to seat 6 people without them encroaching…

Manuela—Not looking for Love Anymore

This is the final photo in my series. As I've said this project is about looking for connection, not romance. Women are taught to talk with each other about romance the same way men are taught not to talk about their feelings. There are whole industries hinging on women's obsession with romance. The amount of…