Writing
There is something about winter which pares all living things down to their essentials – Moya Cannon I took my mind a walk or my mind took me a walk – whichever was the truth of it – Norman MacCaig I find ChatGPT technically and culturally fascinating. How it works, and what the consequences […]
In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public […]
But I think if any song can touch the heart, then one should value it – Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong I’ll ask the interweb – Lance, Detectorists A few years ago I read about Amy Liptrot when she lived on Orkney, was preparing a book, and using a GPS sky app. I investigated and found there […]
Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we! – William Shakespeare I watched the Detectorists for the first time a few months ago. Then again, and a third time, and I’ve now watched the Christmas Special twice. When the jokes arrived I smiled on two levels. At the joke, and with the recognition. I laughed […]
The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories ― Carl Jung Landscape pictures can offer us, I think, three verities – geography, autobiography, and metaphor ― Robert Adams It can stay silent a lifetime. Who knows anyway what it is, that wild, silky part of ourselves […]
There is something about winter which pares all living things down to their essentials – Moya Cannon, Winter Paths There’s quite good local walking where I live. River, woods, lake and nature reserves within reach. Kestrels occasionally, kingfishers rarely but memorably, perhaps once a year. There are owls in the woods. In the pandemic lockdown […]
In the mountains, there you feel free – T.S. Eliot Some years ago I met two ladies in a Lake District pub. They were animated and interested in whatever was happening and who was there. I was enjoying food and drink after a walk. They’d been exploring valleys, not the high places, as a weekend break more than […]
It can stay silent a lifetime. Who knows anyway what it is, that wild, silky part of ourselves without which no poem can live – Mary Oliver Narratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us – Susan Sontag The Lascaux paintings are some of the oldest art we have. Palaeolithic, […]
But now and then comes an hour when the silence is all but absolute, and listening to it one slips out of time – Nan Shepherd I barely noticed this line in Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain until recently. It’s a book worth reading again, with observations you might not immediately absorb. She describes […]
There’s an idea about nature we might call encounter. We encounter it, without complete understanding. Encounter it, outside the parameters of society. Encounter it, because we see forms of life not ours. It’s a good description, and there are books to be found on the subject. Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk, J.A. Baker’s […]