Intended as preface to a book I was planning in December, 2010
The soul is feminine, I mean passive. It does nothing but feel.
Will and intellect are the masculine elements, delighting in action and creativity for their own sakes. In young men is a naturally warlike instinct: to fight, regardless of the cause espoused, the yin to their yang. To me—and this gives enlightenment as to the dynamics of my psyche—the masculine is properly subservient to the feminine. Good Queen Bess, that Virgin Queen of the first Elizabethan age in England, inspired men to ransack the known world, tolerating their piracies and even ennobling them—Sir Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh. Back in England, courtiers wore doublets and earrings encrusted with pearls. They sought to show mastery in swordsmanship, poetry and stage-strutting. I don’t know how much was inspired by Gloriana. In an earlier century, it was Eleanor of Aquitaine who presided over a great flowering of Provençal minstrelsy, the troubadour poets. In this second Elizabethan age, I’m no plunderer, but a would-be servant of Soul in the sphere of literature.
My masculine part knows nothing of Soul. It delights in the technical: calligraphy, typographical design, engineering. My profession, in which I have never excelled, has been that of a computer programmer, though in the religion of technology I remain a conservative sceptic: conservative in preferring the old, sceptic in seeing no salvation in the future. In any project I’m likely to descend, in a hierarchical cascade, to the lowest, most repetitive detail. This may be a tendency at the mild end of the autistic spectrum, but it’s also a displacement activity: avoiding the tricky by plunging into what’s easy. Soul is the tricky one. She hides, she reappears, fleeing through the woods in diaphanous robes, calling over her shoulder: “Catch me if you can!”
The eternally feminine Soul knows how to snare the impulsive clumsy male. In my descent to the physical, primitive and instinctive, I’m drawn to the most repetitive human activity, the one which defines and distinguishes the human from other animals: walking on two feet. Walking the surface of the earth, I’m attentive enough for the visit of Soul.
We are the mammals which dream of flying, though only the bats, who we can hardly save from extinction, can physically do it. Through intellect, we’ve built aeroplanes. Through imagination, our feet can leave the surface, letting us fly on endless journeys of fantasy which infect every aspect of civilisation and weaken us till all we have to embrace are counterfeit copies of Soul. The sculptor Pygmalion fell in love with the Galatea of carved imagination. Modern man prefers to go everywhere cocooned by car, cut off from his roots, ignorant of Soul.
Without even knowing what I am doing, I strive to be Soul’s champion, sometimes able to hear her whisper and capture it in written language and published literature.
The blog format is imperfect, designed for today’s scribble more than an author’s collected works. I’ve long pondered a conventional book, but that’s competitive and commercial. I shall serve Soul, not Mammon, and distribute my words in my own way. Which brings me to the promise of a Christmas gift, a first distillation of A Wayfarer’s Notes. It’s a draft offered to a few friends of this blog.
And this post (after much-needed edits) will be the book’s Preface. Season’s Greetings to you all.
a wayfarer’s notes 
Hi Vincent
Wonderful is this news of your book; I am in delightful anticipation.
re: “I may get lots of results and never make any conclusive inference.”
Richard Tarnas: “And their (feminine and masculine) synthesis leads to something beyond itself: It brings an unexpected opening to a larger reality that cannot be grasped before it arrives, because this new reality is itself a creative act.”
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I am in delightful anticipation of sending it to you too, Raymond. Copy no. 001 will soon be speeding down the copper wires, optic cables and, for all I know, the ethers between here and some orbiting satellite.
And now I shall have to discover your Richard Tarnas.
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I'd be delighted to receive copy 002 by whatever conbination of cables and mythical substances technology and seredipity should chance upon. Can't do you an apposite quote from an obscure author just at this moment like raymond, but I'll see what I can come up with.
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Hi CIngram. I’ll do so, and copy no. 002 will be different from 001, because I need to amend the preface a bit, but let it remain spontaneous and imperfect, like life.
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both charming and delightful! I'd be thrilled to have a copy!
you have mentioned that we are similar but that I back myself into purposeful corners that force action. Perhaps it is because I share some of your traits, but in inverse proportions.
For me, it is easy to dream and fantasize-plan, but difficult to act – and repetitive action is the most difficult of all to force myself to do. Will power isn't my strength (though stubbornness sometimes serves as effectively.)
And yet, each of us, if we would survive in this world, must do some portion of both. So I back myself into corners, knowing that it combats the dreaming side and insures action.
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Vincent, congratulations on preparing the anthology. Have you considered submitting it to any number of free POD services on the internet? Over there you can permit free pdf down loads so that any one who wishes can download it free (all you do is provide the URL) or if they prefer they could order a printed copy by post with some cost involved. You retain the copyright in such services and may reprint it in future with another publisher if you wish.
The service can be free or if you wish you can get your book an ISBN for a small fee (that way it will be listed in book catalouges). There is no competition involved all submitted works are accepted immediately
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As so often, dear Ashok, we think on parallel lines—which as we know travel together but never meet. I was last night thinking of one of these print-on-demand services, perhaps lulu.com. That would not be to allow free pdf downloads, because I will continue to distribute those personally, amongst online friends of the blog.
The free copies are issued under copyright as review drafts, while the text still evolves. The idea is to allow limited circulation on a viral basis. In due course I’ll contact one of those companies with a view to getting an ISBN and production on demand in hardback with a nicely illustrated dust-jacket. They’ll then be offered on sale in the usual manner at a suitable price (so that I can recover costs at least).
In this way, the inspirations which have set the blog on its trajectory will continue evolving without a traumatic transition to print via agent and publisher at this stage.
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Hayden, a copy will come to you soon. I realized this morning that they are all drafts, and that the principles of blogging still apply – instant publishing, interaction with readers and so on. Example: I had a provisional title now it’s changed again.
Yes, you and I too are on parallel tracks. This is the universal human discovery albeit not a common one: to discover commonality amongst the diverse.
Though we may have discussed the individuality of the other animals, it’s human beings who are truly diverse. It’s nice to see the justification for this diversity — individual quirks which have their place in evolution’s rather new special project called homo sapiens sapiens.
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Sounds good Vincent. Best wishes for speedy progress towards completion of this project.
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How shall I congratulate you?! only an acknowledgement that you have showed me the light and i should take the light in me forward.
do you have my email id? please let me know if you don't have, 'cause i searched but did not get my ebook.
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I hope I may be included on the circulation list, Vincent! I should consider it a great honour. And I expect it will be an equally great pleasure to read the anthology.
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Vincent, I am thrilled to hear this news. Your writings are so rich that I have visited them over and over. Each visit has revealed something new to me as my perspective has changed over time.
This is also timely as it gives me an opportunity to read them without haste during holiday vacations.
I too, would like a copy. Thank you.
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Thanks Charles, I don't seem to have your email address. You can send it to the address on my profile.
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I´d love to receive a copy, Vincent.Thanks for this charming gift to us, your readers!
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