Buck Fuller

I've been cataloguing my books. They're scattered across the house. Some years ago I got rid of all the IKEA shelves and built my own, as a tribute to this cherished collection. Every volume has its own tale to tell: how was it acquired, why and when? Sometimes memory fails: the tale is lost. Which…

Radical Love

first of a projected series on "Possibility" This may be the first time that the world has got close to being united in a common hope; this despite continuance of being separated by incompatible wishes and fears; not to mention ongoing hate and conflict. I glean from media that to many of us, the world…

Sixteen Feet High

'Suppose everything is just as it should be, already? Suppose everything goes on being just right, no matter what? So whatever creatures do—even mankind—then Nature as a whole (which includes mankind) bounces back, fixing the consequences as best it may?' . . . . This post was originally published on August 12th 2010 as "Aylesbury…

Fitting into one’s space

I've been thinking that the real problem of growing old is to fit ourselves into the space we find ourselves in. By "ourselves" I mean the "I", the human consciousness with all its ideas, memories & habits. By "space" I mean our total situation, consisting of body and habitat. These days old age is not…

Paradoxes

I visited someone in a locked mental ward. She desperately wants to get out but is not ready to do so. She’s a lawyer, indeed a barrister, though I doubt if that fraternity will open its arms again to her. This piece was dated August 8th 2006, same as my previous Never considered it suitable…

Bygone bloggery, Bee & Thistle

To be a writer, you only need one reader. If you google “literary blogs” you will find those which gossip about literature, rather than consider themselves as literature. I am not interested in gossip, and abhor the clichéd thoroughfares of discourse. But I think blogging is my kind of literature, at least for now. .…

The organizing power of words

I write here to express my thoughts and it’s difficult because they branch out in all directions, and I struggle to find an organizing principle. My thought is a response to the interaction of myself with the rest of the world. It’s constantly dynamic, like the global weather system. . . . First published on…

Fingers and Moon

I was dumbfounded: confounded and struck dumb at the same time. It was a congenial place to be, I discovered, being content to stay there a while, sheltered in the dignity and grace of not knowing, that is, shedding false knowledge. . . . First published on July 15th 2015 and reissued to complement Natalie…

Being human with what we’ve got

Dear Vincent A long gap between communications tends to blur thoughts that were sharp when originally conceived - ie: when I first read your excellent last post. Maybe that’s a salutary reminder of how ephemeral our thoughts are anyway! Now that there’s a quiet moment I want to try to sum up what I wanted…

What looks after us?

I've been wanting to write about the role of angels in my life. Like most words in any language, it's loaded with baggage going back millennia. Let's strip off that heavy weight of meanings, leave it in a heap and walk lightly away. I want to go back to a time before I had words…

Fourteen Strands

This site started as a blog. These days it hardly has anything new to say, but remains as a sprawling overgrown labyrinth, still here for all comers, whether regular readers or stray visitors on some quest of their own. Hard to find, deliberately not signposted. Perhaps it might be refurbished. A designer hired for the…

The Chilterns

Visits to the sunflower field in Downley, mentioned three times before, have become a private ritual. These unharvested crops survive like invincible peasant crones. In Italian, the sunflower is the girasole or “turn-sun”. Its sun-worship is enabled by fibrous sinews in its "neck", made of certain cellulose molecules, and these don’t decay as rapidly as…

Ritual on New Year’s Day

I’ve been doing this for months now, writing little notes and essays for anyone to see, like graffiti on a public wall. I’ve got used to the rhythm of it, as an important part of my life. It’s legal, free and gives me a kick. I’ve long had fugitive thoughts and feelings which seemed precious…

In the bleak midwinter

Christmas is the most renowned of all the world’s festivals. It’s full of drama and contrast and potent symbols. Like many, I dread the tawdry commercialisation, sentimentality and ubiquity of this season’s trappings. But I see it differently now, having spent an entire year celebrating the daily advance and decline of Nature's rhythms in the…

The offender

I suppose gawking out of morbid curiosity is a universal trait. In America they call it rubbernecking. In England crowds used to gather at public hangings or burnings at the stake, to see the condemned in extremis, and how they conducted themselves. For lesser crimes, we had the pillory and the stocks, restraining an offender…

Ce Que Vouldras – Do what thou wilt

"I escape whenever I can to explore these exciting places, and it would take a big volume to record the feelings and memories evoked by the sounds and smells and visual impact." Previously published on Friday April 27th, 2007. After disinterring it today I recall another post but am unable to find it in any…

Entering the Mapless Dimension

This is the day I become clear about the purpose of my purposeless journey. Now the task is to express clearly what I see clearly. My path leads more to the past than the future, for “the past is my treasure” as an archaeologist might say. previously published on Saturday March 13th, 2010 Wayfaring Again…

A sense of belonging

So I took off to Bledlow Ridge, a village on the spine of a hill, and zig-zagged down the eastern slope. There was hardly any breeze and the February sun actually warmed my face. Near the top, my route descended to a hollow where the public footpath had been churned up by big-wheeled vehicles. Logs…

Theories of Everything

First there was nothing. Then there was something: the Creation, as engineered by the Big Bang and ongoing evolution to this day.Whatever you call it, it's never stopped. Creation continues, evolution is not complete. Here we are: creativeness builds on the legacy of yesterday to bring something new today, unaffected by the future. Such is…

Paradise Lost / The Tree of Life

“If I can prevent just one person from watching this, it’ll have been worth suffering through it.” Thus begins a review of The Tree of Life by Kevin A Ranson, alias Grim D Reaper; unfortunately one which I didn’t read in time. Published on Blogger, Saturday March 17th,  2012 “If I can prevent just one…

Bygone Bloggery

As an art form, the blog has extraordinary possibilities. It’s a “magic theatre: entrance not for everybody”. Anybody may come and peek, but those for whom it’s not intended will swiftly move on. Où sont les neiges d'antan? Where are the snows of yester-year? Through handwriting to Eternity Published on Blogger, Friday, October 12, 2012…

Holy Family

I guess like other educated white males I haven’t understood the the accusation that came out so often last year in the Black Lives Matter campaigns, that people like me are “privileged”. Especially in the sense that there are things we may never be able to understand, such as the sense of global outrage and…

Joy without a cause

I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher. Night shall be thrice night over you, And heaven an iron cope. Do you have joy without a cause, Yea, faith without a hope?Inspired by G.K. Chesterton's Ballad of the White…

Where We Stand

Politics has never been more rotten, more destructive of the people’s wellbeing. From an impartial distance, this is surely unarguable. But who keeps this distance? From where I stand, democracy (reflecting the people’s choice), and freedom (of the powerful to enrich themselves and do what they like), have become especially poisonous. To the biosphere as…

Invisibles

My guardian angel got her name by accident. It can be traced back to a difference between men and women, in which She (archetypal woman) does chores without remark or fuss. When she dares to interrupt His (archetypal man's) scholarly scribbling, and to ask him to lend a hand, he does so with a little…

Amsterdam

In 2012 we took a break to Holland to celebrate our anniversary and her birthday. The other day I looked for the blog post about it and discovered there wasn't one, though I've written about other places we've been to like  Paris, Brussels, Costa del Sol, Lisbon, Jamaica, Dublin, Wales and the Isle of Wight.…

From Etty, to God

". . . there is a remarkable woman who can give us vision and stability, who can help us to do good despite all the terror due to the Covid-19 virus. She speaks from another time of dread, the Holocaust." From her journal: "You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your…

Images of the future

Lovelock: ... I could be completely wrong, but if it does really warm up as badly as I’ve said in that book, and it might well do, then we’ll be lucky if there’s a billion left. And that’s a lot— Humphrys: So in other words, seven out of eight will die— Lovelock: Well, something like…

Guided Randomness

I've often asked myself "Do you believe in God?" but never got an answer, only that it's an unanswerable question. A better one would be "What do you believe in?" One has to search within oneself, but not for some borrowed ideas and expressions, some flag of convenience to sail under and dodge the challenge.…

Face-to-Face

The ghost of Christine Keeler is returning to public view, in the form of a TV series now on BBC, and a forthcoming exhibition in London, which I heard about through Natalie D'Arbeloff's blog, in which she says Christine Keeler was, in that story, simultaneously absolutely powerless and absolutely powerful. She was neither victim nor…

While Unsleeping

A kind of liberation ensues when you accept the situation, displeasing as it may be, that you find yourself in at this moment. For example insomnia & remembrance of past mistakes—to name but one. For me, they are synonymous. Liberation is an art, the act of turning something round the other way.To embrace the negative…

Strange Angels (Laurie Anderson)

Video is a clip from "The Doctor", a 1991 film starring William Hurt and Elizabeth Perkins. Background music is from a song by Laurie Anderson. Strange angels - / Singing just for me / Old stories - / They’re haunting me /This is nothing like I thought it would be ¶ Well I was out…

Shapes of Space

As I lay awake this morning before getting up, a great procession of thoughts came to visit me. Thoughts? I'm not sure what a thought is. They were dwelling-places of the imagination, like images from a waking dream. I guess they were prompted by my last post, which suggested I’d work on my life-story; and…

Dancing on the Bar

I'm finding that life is full of pointers from a friendly universe, to guide us on our way, if we are open to the moment like a small child seeing everything for the first time. These words from author Earl Mckenzie spoke to me this morning, and helped crystallize my resolve: Retirement gave me a…

Love Affairs (Arash Farzaneh)

Farzaneh has an imagination, which directs his hero towards a variety of young women encountered during a year in downtown Vancouver, where “all types of girls can be found on the street”. At the end of the novel, in conversation with a waitress, he confesses “I like insecure, moody, promiscuous ice princesses who like to…

Glad

My life has changed so radically in the last 7 days that I don't know what to say. Unless I write, knowing I'll reach a handful of readers, I won't have access to my true thoughts and feelings. Strange perhaps, but it's been this way for a long time. In ordinary consciousness, this radical change…

The Joy of Letting Women Down (Natalie d’Arbeloff)

Originally posted as "The unfairness started with Adam and Eve" Before that apple business, Adam and Eve were buddies, gambolling around the Garden with the other animals like a couple of kids and if they had sex at all, it was innocent sex. Then sly old Satan, dressed up as a snake, wriggled up to…

The writing on the wall

Yesterday I was accosted by a big black woman of mature years on a corner of the Ledborough Road—that village pump, that microcosm of this glorious world, a few stones'-throws away.  She was not unbeautiful, the sidewalk was not wide, she only needed to stand there to slow my pace. She beamed as though I…

The Bitter Taste

From Bryan White Occasionally, I like to revisit ideas that I disagree with, to see if I can find a reason to reconsider my position. It's a wonderful thing when something compels you to change your mind. It's like a whole new area of the game board opens up. Suddenly there are all these fresh…