A Wayfarer No More?

Years ago, I thought the best way to depart this earth would be as I've lived, in some of the best years of my life as recorded in these pages. For a while these words of the poet Basho became my motto: DAYS and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass…

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A Midwinter Night’s Dream

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 and sedate. Then I find myself drawn into a…

Son Becomes Priest

Inspired by <a href="http://comments">comments on Bryan White' recent dream, and Cindy's sight of the Chinese balloon in St Louis These days I've been waking up several times a night on account of a medical problem that may or may not be identified next week by a special investigation at the hospital, preceded by 2 days…

Escaping from a Festival

We're a bunch of old friends from University days, on our way to somewhere in Wales, in an old Land Rover. Without our copy of The Readers Digest Book of Roads (400 pages), cross-referenced to signposts, we'd have had no chance. Our route takes us up hill and down dale, in a maze of narrow…

In Bed This Morning

Transcribed from our conversations and my scribbled notes Part 1 We both woke up at the same time: 6:40. I often wake at 5.30 and read till she wakes at 6.30. I had a strange dream of living in a foreign land. Where am I? What am I doing here? But then I discovered my…

Brexit dream 4

I was going to call this “The Vision of Perfection”, I’ll try and explain later. But then I jotted down the outline of a confused dream I’d just woken from. An interpretation slowly took form. To dream it at all seemed exhausting. There was a great deal of fruitless effort was being made, seven nights…

The Poetic

From Bryan White For a long time, I was divided between two possible directions that I wanted go with my writing. On the one hand, I felt like I wanted to write something "intellectual" for lack of a better word, something that was like a complicated machine with all kinds of ideas and moving parts,…

When the Past Haunts the Night

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night ... I find myself surprised to discover that the boarding school* I was so glad to leave in 1954 is actually still open for business, run by the same headmaster and his…

Eleventh Child

I woke in the night after a dream, went downstairs to jot it down in the great leatherbound book from Margaret in Canada; then went back to bed and slept again. On awakening once more in the morning, I jotted down another dream. I tried to polish up the drafts into something coherent, but it…

Kindness (audio podcast)

click to to access the podcast transcript … I don’t know why, but the pain and the weariness started first thing Sunday morning, February 5th and here it is today, on the 23rd. I don’t even know what. At first, when I was told it was diverticulitis, I took the antibiotic and thought it was…

University dreams

Continued from "How I came to inhabit this body". I’d been accepted for some Civil Service or academic post, it wasn’t clear which or what. A colleague from a different department invited me for a chat, a sort of all-day induction. He was such good company that I felt guilty to be getting paid for…

Black Books

In reality I don’t have a front garden, just a concreted area big enough to hold four bins, for the separated recyclables, and a few plant pots. It also serves to provide a seven-foot gap between our front door and the sidewalk. There’s no separation from our neighbours’ concreted front area, and their front door…

Brexit dream 2

Yesterday I succumbed to a feeling of exhaustion, after the strain of the last few days, which got to me in spite of trying to detach from it, for I knew that the situation was not mine to untangle. So after breakfast I went back to bed and succumbed to a blessed emptiness. After a…

Brexit dream 3

I dreamt about Clive again, along with two other friends. We’ve been on a trip to Brussels (as I did with school friends in ’58): the headquarters of the European Union. Now it’s time to go back. Our Metro train has just arrived at Brussels Midi, the terminus for the Eurostar train to London. You…

Brexit Dream 1

Marylebone Station Just woke up. Before it fades to oblivion must write down my dream, about our great national Referendum, due in a few days’ time. Shall the UK stay in the EU or leave it? I’m as strong for leaving the European Union as I was strong for Scotland to stay in the United…

Secret Strength

When we are alert to its promptings, the unconscious mind can reach us through various means. Blake had his waking visions; many of us have dreams. They may clothe themselves in a jumble of recent experiences, yet contain latent messages ready for decoding, which may open our eyes to things our well-controlled consciousness has kept…

The happy ending

Three years ago today, on a certain occasion, I received this gift bag A couple of weeks ago I had a visit from my headmaster*. He’s long dead of course, but dreams have something in common with memory and ghosts—which the French call “revenants”—returning ones. With no difficulty, they can span the passage of time.…

Night navigation

It was an eventful day, not without its petty annoyances, but our house-guests were happy, that’s the main thing, and enjoyed a merry evening. I was exhausted and as soon as politely possible retired upstairs. My dreams were scantily populated, and their spaces were wide. I was in a tall office building, looking for the…

Dream Project

My last three posts must have acted on my subconscious like postcards from 1976, inscribed on the back "Wish you were here?", for I dreamed of that time last night. I wouldn't have the audacity to recount it without the pathfinding example of Bryan M. White’s Encyclopedia of Counted Sheep, which offers vivid proof that…

Nightmare

I’ve taken a vow to post here daily, to discover what is happening to me. A million things hit my consciousness each day, so what can I mean? I shall write in accordance with blind compulsion, with no guarantee of truth, other than some poetic kind. Yet, as they used to say in the slot-machine …

Something of the Night

To one who follows his nose as a general principle of life, especially to seek inspiration, it matters when and where the ideas come. Most of the pieces in this blog have been conceived under the sky, preferably walking. “Sit as little as possible; credit no thought not born in the open air and while…

Belonging

The day after posting my last, I felt cleansed, as a Catholic might feel after a visit to the confessional. Burdens removed, joy restored. I had published only a small selection of what I’d drafted, but had never felt such catharsis from writing, if it is justifiable to link effect and cause in this way.…

Meeting myself

last night's dream: I have just dyed my hair orange: a sort of coppery burnt-sienna. I have decided to take up smoking again after all these years, so I leave the house to buy half an ounce of Golden Virginia and some rolling-papers. Do they still sell tobacco in half-ounces, I wonder. Perhaps I will…

Musical Delirium

I’ve come down with “man-flu”. In a woman it would be a simple cold but in a man it’s tantamount to dying and requires tender concern from all the females around. Yesterday morning I drove early to Babylon Town; conscientiously completed the vital tasks at the MaxiRam Corporation on which the team depends. Then I…

Mozart and Angels

I’ve been preoccupied with engineering of late, getting my hands dirty on oily metal, instead of this digital thing, tapping on a keyboard to send digital signals, using digits of the hand, co-ordinated by the eye. Coincidentally, I've been watching The Train (1964), starring Paul Scofield, Burt Lancaster and Jeanne Moreau. The drama of the…

Dream lesson

I’ve started a new contract job, so the environment and people are all new to me. The lead consultant explains my task. He’s very bright, one of those impressive all-rounders with a “first-class brain”. I find myself speaking intelligently to him, so I feel it will go OK, despite the task being at the boundary…