Started on Tuesday December 23rd, 2025. As ever. I look for illustrations to brighten the text, and discovered this of Oxford’s “dreaming spires” on my computer
This winter-eve is warm;
Humid the air; leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on copse and briers;
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires.
She needs not June for beauty’s heightening.
It turns out that the phrase comes from a poem by Matthew Arnold, see snippet above. Enough now
I think or speak of death daily. Yes, I don’t always think when I speak, as Karleen likes to point out. My life runs on words as a train runs on rails. This blog is a reminder of my responses to life across the years, decorated with pictures that seemed significant at the time.
Growing old is a funny business. I’m 70 days short of being 84, and feeling that parts of my body, including the brain part, are growing stiff and thus functioning badly.
The saving grace is my conviction that everything is meant to happen and is for the best. I don’t believe anyone can speak for others: which stops religion dead in its tracks. I’ve no more need of guidance in how to live, not any more.
My religious observance, if you want to think of it that way, is to give thanks: which is the same as praising the Lord. Who or what is the Lord? Unknowable, it doesn’t matter. I think I’ve been saying this in more long-winded ways since this blog started, whenever that was it goes way back before WordPress—perpetual-lab.blogspot.com, which can be found on archive.org, and my own disorganized webspace on Claranet Soho.
Enough for now. More later.
a wayfarer’s notes 