Bursting the boundaries
A wonderful comment on life – you can come up with as many fine formulae as you like, it will sooner or later defy our clever definitions. Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. Part of me says, ‘Thank goodness’. For other comments on this...
The breath of happiness
Ivan is a character, apparently based on Vasily Grossman’s brother-in-law, who survived 30 years in a gulag before being released into ‘normal’ life. He is resilient enough to be able to rediscover the existence of love and kindness, as well as...
What are decades to dreams?
Golding, sailing past the island of Ithaka, thought he would return and land within a few months. Then war and life intervened, and it took him more than a quarter of a century. Which goes to show, hang on to your dreams long enough and they can come true. Or, more...
Live wisely, live well
Isn’t this all we’re trying to do when we talk about ‘sustainability’, ‘circular economy’, or climate change? When it’s put so simply, it sounds easy, but we have a long way to go before we can see our stifling ignorance fall...
Begin afresh
A soughing sense of spring surging in the dense-leaved trees.  You can hear the branches, brushing against each other in the dancing breeze, whispering like a wish in your ear, enticing you to begin afresh, afresh, afresh. Yet still the unresting castles threshIn...
Teaching the tree
A step in the process of creation, where the Creator takes a moment to teach the tree its leaf. They learned well, and this is the season we see them unfurl their lessons, each perfectly mastered. Everywhere he taughtThe tree its leaf.  Source: Ted Hughes,...
Of life and lilac
This man is one who returns from the dead, from decades in a gulag in Siberia, released during one or another political thaw. He returns to ‘normal’ life, and it is interesting to see the signs of it which make him realise it had continued even as he was...
As long as you’re alive
One day I decided not to rely solely on Charlton Heston’s interpretation of El Cid but to go to the original (with the aid of a parallel translation). The epic Song of the Cid dates from around the second half of the 12th century and in places has a touching...
Oh you later travellers
I’m always touched by people connecting to us from the past, throwing their light into an unknown future in addressing, in a human and friendly way, people not even born. George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte do this by addressing readers directly, and you, reading...
Leaning into the light
The candour of this statement struck me, and also reassured me that my own paltry attempts at living a ‘moral and compassionate existence’ are no worse than can be expected of an average human in a human world. I accepted very young that questioning is...
An inmate of this active universe
This current and timeless phrase – with that curious ‘inmate’ alongside the energetic ‘active’ – comes from Wordsworth’s image of himself as an infant, tapping into some greater connectivity than mere wifi systems and smart...
Of stars and Dante
On this day, which many of us celebrate as being connected in some way to light and at very least to peace on earth and goodwill to all, let’s enjoy the little known fact that in the Divine Comedy:Â Dante ends each book with the word “stars”.And so he...
Grab hold of life
This year has seen a surfeit of old people whose hold on life has slipped. Hoyle is an ornery character but one who nevertheless has the spirit of nuannaarpoq, partly by turning a health problem to good use: easily out of breath when he walks, he just walks more...
A matter of infinite concern
As Seamus Heaney describes it, this is a ‘heavenly father’ who makes wonderful use of the quality of omnipotence, by drawing on his boundless attention, energy and bandwidth to cherish every fallen sparrow, egg or other fragile life form, through all...
The most radiant conditions
This lovely phrase, in a collection of essays by the poet Seamus Heaney, struck me as being in large part what the world is aiming for when it talks about sustainability, sustainable development goals and related rather dry terms. It is combined with an interesting...
We are love, we are
Recently found a scrap of paper with a list of 1960s-1980s progressive rock and similar bands. I believe I may have jotted them down in a conversation with one of my brothers during which we were revisiting songs we listened to at the time. To show you how young I...
Letters of fire in the sky
Balint is the protagonist of a wonderful trilogy chronicling the declining decades of the Hungarian aristocracy in the years leading to the First World War. He is also one of its most thoughtful, endearing characters. Here he ponders a moment beneath a night sky and...
Everything flows
Grossman quotes the Greek and also used this as the title of one of his books. The eternal river, always flowing, always changing, and always the same. May it carry you safely.  “Everything flows, everything changes,” said the Greek. Source: Vasily...
In praise of the scruffy and marginal
I love hedgehogs and see them as an ambling, loveable, flea-scratching symbol of hope and freedom, as well as the rights of the scruffy and marginal to be scruffy and marginal. If they can survive in your garden, your garden is healthy. If the species survives our...
These days of September
A surprising insight by the author of All Quiet on the Western Front. You will never see this month the same way again, here proposed as a metaphor for a stage of life, the ninth month of a lifespan of twelve.  So many fine aspects of a human existence, including...
Neglect nothing
This sense of completion in an artist’s life struck me, and it made me think about what I may be neglecting now. I take as read the implication that he means ‘nothing important’. A no-regrets summary of life. It also echoes something my father has...
Far the greater number
If you can die concluding that by far the greater number of people in the world are very good, you have had a good life or perhaps you have just lived it well. Here, Steinbeck concludes his slim, rich account of a month spent in the Soviet Union at the height of the...
Here is a valuable life
Lopez’s description of a tough animal encountered on a summer’s day, arresting him with its direct gaze, reminds me of the sightings of birds we enjoy in our garden. In one spot, we used a pair of terracotta pots, about a foot high and nearly as much...Yes, sign me up!
