Lately I've been donating dozens of books to the Sally Army. I brought a few more yesterday and on the way out noticed they have started giving away books, presumably deeming them unsaleable. The other day I found a book I’d recently donated in the pile—Against the Current, by Isaiah Berlin. When I pointed this out,… Continue reading Recycling via the Salvation Army
Category: paintings and drawings
Country boy down in New Orleans – Snooks Eaglin
Snooks Eaglin was blind, spent much of his childhood learning to play guitar. Allow me to share one of my favorite blues with you. It's illustrated throughout with some beautiful paintings
A Brush With The Past
I've just finished my first attempt at watercolours since 1958. From the age of 12, I went to King James I School, in Newport, Isle of Wight. It was built as a grammar school in 1613, with some latter additions to accommodate up to 120 boys. Our art master was Mr Bell, a strict disciplinarian.… Continue reading A Brush With The Past
Good Vibrations, good migration
Revised on October 3rd Things have changed in my body & psyche. One is the worse for wear, the other has recovered after 6 weeks of insanity, diagnosed as an infection of the brain which like the common cold has cleared up by itself. During those 6 weeks my head ran wild ("Freak Out!") scaring… Continue reading Good Vibrations, good migration
Housewifery
HOUSEWIFERY is the efficient running of a house, and embraces problems of widely different natures. It includes the problem of running the house economically, seeing that the money available is spent to the best purpose. It includes keeping the house clean, for cleanliness and hygiene are the basis of healthy living. It includes a knowledge… Continue reading Housewifery
Holy Family
Ascension of Yemaya into the Waters 2019 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… Continue reading Holy Family
Love Affairs
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… Continue reading Love Affairs
The Coffee House: a brief history . . .
. . . from De Quincey to Starbucks Coleridge had published Kubla Khan in 1816. The first English translations of the Arabian Nights in the early 18th century had provided an aura of magic and violent intrigue. And The Travels of Marco Polo had been widely available since the Middle Ages. As a result, the… Continue reading The Coffee House: a brief history . . .
Girl with a Pearl Earring
From Bryan White I just finished reading Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. A few posts back, when Vincent said that he was "inspired" by books that he was waiting to get in the mail, I was in a similar situation at the time with this book. It was sitting on my bookshelf,… Continue reading Girl with a Pearl Earring
Art as Generosity
Art is a way of giving to the world what one holds most precious John Sebastian Bach had good reason to be grumpy. There was scant appreciation for his enormous efforts. He didn't get paid for writing music. In those days there was a system of patronage. He'd be engaged by a city council or… Continue reading Art as Generosity
Life-story, part 1
I want to tell the story of my entire life up to the present: the bare-bones series of events, with no fanciful embroidery. Let it be like a series of chess moves without the expert commentary. Let it be like a dispassionate ship's log. Let the facts tell their own story. As far as possible,… Continue reading Life-story, part 1
Owen Glendower
Written in 2002 for La Lettre Powsienne, a periodical edited by Jacqueline Peltier I don’t know of any novel to compare it with, unless you feel able to imagine that Sir Walter Scott, whom Powys admired, had like Coleridge experimented with drugs and rewritten his Quentin Durward under the influence of peyote or LSD, and… Continue reading Owen Glendower
The Towers of Cybele
Here's another essay written for Jacqueline Peltier's Lettre Powysienne, a little magazine in two languages for a list of subscribers. On her website you can only find her French translation, but I've fortunately kept the English original, written in 2005. When I mentioned "Amazon" in my first paragraph, she asked me to explain what it… Continue reading The Towers of Cybele
Peg, a minor character
In the last couple of days I've been horrified to discover myself becoming a hapless patient, lacking the means or strength to act in the world and thus demonstrate personhood, that prerequisite for the continued will to live. It was like being a ghost. It did not even occur to me to pray or give… Continue reading Peg, a minor character
On Fresh Air Alone
Rediscovered and restored the post today. At 2,034 words, it's the longest on this site, possibly has the most pictures and the most rambling narrative If you want to go somewhere and enjoy an undisturbed smoke I suggest the Nineteen-Fifties. If you were actually around at the time, it’s no problem—wings of memory will take… Continue reading On Fresh Air Alone
At the Blue Note Café
It was dusk, on a winding country road hemmed in by darkening hedgerows on either side. Round a bend, I suddenly saw two mediaeval peasants trudging along at the roadside, bearing staffs and bundles and what looked like bamboo hats on their backs. I was led back in memory to the Blue Note Café by… Continue reading At the Blue Note Café
The printing-factory
I wonder why, out of the mass of all we forget, some inconsequential things stick in our minds. Perhaps they chime with our destiny, that elusive future no one can see till it arrives. And when it does, perhaps something from our rag-bag of memories may “ring a bell”, as if it had been foreshadowed.… Continue reading The printing-factory
a letter from Vincent
[Arles, Mid-October 1888] My dear Theo, At last I am sending you a small sketch to give you at least an idea of the form which the work is taking. For today I am all right again. My eyes are still tired, but then I had a new idea in my head and here is… Continue reading a letter from Vincent
Everything Knows
by Ghetufool “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all Ridicule and Deformity...”—Blake I’ve published two of Ghetu’s stories before: Free as a Bird and Ticket to Paradise. Here is his latest. Like the others,… Continue reading Everything Knows
My 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… Continue reading My Dream Project
Wittgenstein
Restored to its original form after some unwise revisionism in 2021 The other day I was writing about being nineteen and somehow feeling the same way fifty years later. But it was a mysterious feeling because I could not adduce a single instance of nineteenhood to illustrate my point. So it is a coincidence that… Continue reading Wittgenstein
Happiness machine
Matt Lowe of the blog “Liberal Jesus” wrote a post pointing to an article in the New York Times. Matt admitted “I can’t figure out quite what I think about it. I need a little goading I think.” I hastily appended my own working definition of happiness: that it's when one can say "I don't… Continue reading Happiness machine
Creation myth
In the beginning was the void. How big was it? How long did it last? It’s impossible to say because time and space had not yet been created. Let’s imagine it as an empty matchbox. The Prime Mover, impatient for things to start, opened the box and the void escaped like a genie from a… Continue reading Creation myth
Graffiti
Further to my last, Rebb and Ashok doubtless speak for a majority in their negative attitude towards urban graffiti. I’ve evolved a different view, as expressed in several posts—see excerpts below. The illustrations are taken from this post on 27th April ’07. But where do the people walk? Yesterday in the drizzle I stepped carefully… Continue reading Graffiti
Alley creatures
At the weekend, Karleen and I went walking on a hillside meadow, full of wildflowers, that you can see across the valley from many vantage-points. Amongst the blooms was lots of ragwort, notorious for being poisonous to grazing mammals. I looked carefully for any sign of the cinnabar caterpillar, but none were to be seen.… Continue reading Alley creatures
A modest school reunion
I often “dwell in the past”. It’s a fabulous museum, where you can look at the same exhibits time and again, and discover new ones you hadn’t noticed before, and see the familiar ones from new angles. My fondness for this pastime owes a lot to my sense that I didn’t live my life fully… Continue reading A modest school reunion
Life’s Predicament
Woke up this morning to recall that it’s my first ordinary day for weeks. I've emerged from a season of interruptedness, in which celebration took the form of reuniting with family; not all at once in a single gathering but serially; noting my kinship and resemblance with this one or that; seeing the big or… Continue reading Life’s Predicament
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 … Continue reading Nightmare
Walking in a painted landscape
My life is a series of blessings, like a string of pearls. If a blessing is possible, surely it is bestowed, distributed, not hoarded by a miserly God. And if blessings occur, why should they ever stop? For a blessing by its definition is a supernatural thing. No obstacle stands in its way. So I… Continue reading Walking in a painted landscape
Norfolk House 4: Vignettes
Illustration from a wood engraving by Eric Gill Please note that the Norfolk House story begins at “Nest of Dreams”, so I’ve numbered that “0”. Also that the mention of my “man-flu” affliction introducing yesterday’s piece was a warning that it would be rough. It’s edited extensively now. In “Nest of Dreams” I referred to… Continue reading Norfolk House 4: Vignettes
The Madman’s Idea
rediscovered this post today. All these years later, I'm still as "ordinary", whatever that means, but can't tap stuff like this into my super-ergonomic keyboard Like a poor man suddenly gifted with gold, that’s burning a hole in my pocket, I am newly burdened with the riches of an idea, impatient to spend and be… Continue reading The Madman’s Idea
The “Nothing Girl”
No blog-writer has to apologize for liberal use of the words “I” and “me”. It’s expected. But when you read mine, one-off or regular, you’ll be implicitly aware that my “I” is a lens for looking at the big mysteries of life. It is through the personal that I reach out to the universal. I’ve… Continue reading The “Nothing Girl”
The angelic gift
An English Spring can be two-faced, like life itself. The sun warms you and the chill wind finds its way through your clothes, both at the same time. For a whole week I haven’t written here, but the will was there and a need to understand what’s been happening to me. I’ve been feeling uneasy; … Continue reading The angelic gift
Wake up!
Petrol costs more than gasoline but it's still too cheap. They are of course two names for the same thing. Gasoline (US) has always been cheaper than petrol (UK). We don't have our own oil-wells. When the price really goes up it will hurt, but life on Earth will improve. Communities will be restored, obesity… Continue reading Wake up!
a wayfarer’s notes 