Commonplace Book

Antonín Hudeček "Some sheep were raising a cloud of crop dust in the sun. A hedgehog rustled among the leaves of an apple tree. A ferry barge was moving away from the shore; on it was a man who held his horses by the bridle, steadying them as they inhaled through snorting nostrils. From high above the forest's moss-like expanses came the call of cranes in passage: kruuu - kruuu. ...If only a moment of everything's happening could be arrested, fixed, examined in a glass jar; if only it could be peeled away from the moment before and the moment after, and the tissue of time stretched into an ocean of space! But no." Czeslaw Milosz, "The Issa Valley" It happens, usually in summer, about halfway through. A moment I want to stay and live in, examine from all angles and experience to the full. Is it just me or does it seem that we only skim the surface of a moment, and that there are depths we never reach?

William Samuel Henry Llewellyn "Like a medium, I flowed into, or was possessed by, other streams of being, imagination released from all check was set vibrating and took astonishing action...I had become for days on end creatures in Wonderland; I had lost and won duels and battles, committed crimes and heroisms, achieved nobility, endured accident, died many times in many ways, plotted against my king, had mistresses and been them, triumphed and been defeated on cricket field and tennis court, followed the Grail, felt danger and delight, starved and been rich, loved and been loved, hated and been hated, been beautiful and ugly, strong and weak - lived through a phantasmagoria of experience that life could not have offered me at that age, if ever." Eleanor Cameron "The Green and Burning Tree" Dod Procter Trying something different here - if no one is paying attention I can get away with it. Just a sort of free-flowing (haha) response to the qu...

  Robert McGuiness "Reason sits firm and holds the reigns...I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience." “I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.” Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte I always thought it was Jane who made that first remark, but no, it's Rochester, describing Jane's character. Jane thoroughly impressed me as a young girl, and was always at the back of my mind as an example of true strength and beauty. Personally I don't think we can overestimate the value of a female protagonist who is described as "plain" yet is full of life, intelligence and inner strength. In an image-obsessed world, I find her unutterably refreshing.  Rereadi...

"In laughter we transcend not only the animals but also ourselves and our circumstances. We transcend disappointment and suffering. We transcend the jumbled contradictions of our lives. We transcend even the self-imposed requirement that life always make sense, conform to a plan, work out, give us our due, or be equitable and just." The Comic Vision & the Christian Faith: A Celebration of Life and Laughter, M. Conrad Hyers     " This [comedy] is the ultimate human transubstantiation, the true test of the alchemy of the human spirit...It is as though in some sacred sense this world for all its inequalities and this body for all its frailties and this time for all its inconsequentia is where one ought to be. It is as though life were intrinsically holy, and that to fail to savor it, rejoice in it, and be humored by it would be a great sacrilege." M. Conrad Hyers Transcendence, alchemy - no big thing.  I like that, " the sel...

Steven Callahan, lost at sea in The Rubber Ducky 3 "In these moments of peace, deprivation seems a strange sort of gift. I find food in a couple of hours of fishing each day, and I seek shelter in a rubber tent. How unnecessarily complicated my past life seems. For the first time, I clearly see a vast difference between human needs and human wants. Before this voyage, I always had what I needed - food, shelter, clothing, and companionship - yet I was often dissatisfied when I didn't get everything I wanted, when people didn't meet my expectations, when a goal was thwarted, or when I couldn't aquire some material goody. My plight has given me a strange kind of wealth, the most important kind.I value each moment that is not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, thirst, or loneliness. Even here, there is richness all around me. As I look out of the raft, I see God's face in the smooth waves. His grace in the dorado's swim, feel His breath against...

Adriano Farinella "More often I looked upwards at the great cathedral piles of clouds that passed along the winter sky, extravagant and erring shapes radiantly rimmed or quite ensilvered by the sun. Once, a broad shaft of light, let out from the clouds, beamed down upon the distant land. It lit up the ground on which it fell and slowly moved from field to field, from hedge to hedge, as if looking for something - like a great searchlight reversed. Then it went out suddenly, as if switched off. The clouds above increased in splendour. ...Clouds are water, and they have weight - we know that much. Then why do they not sink to the ground? They should be continually falling at our feet. Yet they stay up there, though they are not supported from below nor held from above...Another question. How is it that clouds are so complete, so sharp in their outline? We look up into the sky and see these chiselled leviathans swimming through the ocean of air at the bottom of which we ...

A quote. A comment.  Like this: "And I admit that I wanted to shout, for standing on top of a scaffold in front of a good new wall always goes to my head. It is a sensation something between that of an angel let out of his cage into a new sky and a drunkard turned loose in a royal cellar."      "The Horse's Mouth", Joyce Cary   "A good new wall." That's Gulley Jimson, artist and vagabond. With plans to paint a mural.I feel similar - beginning this blank page. What will I do? What are the possibilities? Anything. Anything at all.  We'll see where it takes me.