The same leap of the spirit carries me up. God or no god, I am fey again – Nan Shepherd Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it – Tao Te Ching The Welsh word Rhinog means threshold, and the hills […]
What we may well believe has the power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower – Cormac McCarthy There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray, love, remember. And there is pansies, […]
This is one of my favourite areas. You see very few people climbing Cnicht, and I’ve never seen anyone walking the lakes below. I used to think it was pronounced nicht, like nicked, but in fact the C is not silent. Here at least, it could be changeable depending on the word; I don’t know. […]
I’m thinking of meadows after reading about them. These are the best, they say in The Times, for good summer walks. Different parts of England, Scotland, and Wales. The person who wrote it is not speaking from experience but finds them on the internet. That means two things. There will be better meadows inevitably, and […]
There is something about winter which pares all living things down to their essentials – Moya Cannon It learns…something – Lex Fridman talking with Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet, and envisaged it as a utopian democratic space. We all did, excited with the new technology. Talk to anyone, reason together, […]
Does the outer space into which we dissolve taste of us at all? – Rilke There are shadows because there are hills ― E.M. Forster I’ve been reading the Chinese Book of Changes and it refers to aesthetics, which is a good subject for photographers. The I Ching was the basis for a question which […]
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 […]
Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in – Mary Oliver In all things, the Way does not want to be obstructed – Chuang Tsu Before undergraduate university I read preparatory books. Bertrand Russell, Sartre, Thomas Hardy, Steinbeck, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. […]
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 […]