What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men – each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature – are shot down wholesale. If, however, we were not something more than unique human beings and each man jack of us […]
It’s well worth taking some time to… ponder the idea that we consist not just of one single ‘I’ but of a large number of ‘I’s that constantly compete for attention. For example, the reader may well now be in Reading-these-words-I but also feeling the urge to get into Wondering-what-the-first sentence-means-for-them-I while being dominated by […]
In his introduction to the OUP After London (1980) John Fowles wrote ‘…Some of his more starry-eyed later worshippers have forgotten that he enjoyed hunting and killing for much of his life…’ I once had a neighbour who owned a cat and a dog both of whom he obtained from a rescue centre; they were […]
When my father died in 1971, I read The Story of My Heart for solace; I found it abundantly in its pages: ‘It is useless to fill the heart with bubbles. A loved one gone is gone…’ And I have continued to think of him since then at least once a day, using his spirit […]
On 6th February 1989 I did a little chinwag in Swindon about the only four Jefferies novels I had access to then. I’ve just re-read what I said about The Dewy Morn and it still seems to make reasonable sense! There are little tweaks I’d make now. Here’s the original chinwag with a few 2022 […]
Pre-amble I’ve not long finished reading Restless Human Hearts for the first time. Having only recently re-joined the Richard Jefferies Society after many years of wandering around in other things (I remember Cyril Wright very well…) it was exciting to find that the books which had only been names to me for sixty years had […]
There are moments in our lives that stand out clear and shining against the sun of the soul, and in those moments the Being becomes suffused by a radiant light. This light blots out for a time the dark texture of the years through which we have passed. The soul becomes charged with new life […]
I wake up at 6 o’clock when the sun is not long before appearing in the sycamore east these autumn days when the apples outside my window have all been picked and the sounds scents & colours are settling into a dreamy haze. And then with complete lack of thought heron heading south white as […]
We amble along living from day to day, whatever the circumstances, locked into the prison of a long succession of present moments which we don’t normally think about; they add up to what we have grown into the unexamined habit of calling ‘consciousness’; because we have the word we take it for granted that ‘consciousness’ […]
There I was dawdling through Sunday After the War (1944) by Henry Miller (1891-1980), various autobiographical writings randomly put together, when I was suddenly reminded of his connection with Gurdjieff. He had returned from Europe after ten years away from home which he finds greatly changed and spends a good deal of time in tears. […]
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