Mountains are big, very big, but they are also great. Very great. They have dignity and other aspects of greatness … the smaller we come to feel ourselves compared with the mountain, the nearer we come to participating in greatness. Arne Naess – The Ecology of Wisdom In a few days time I am leaving the flat plain of London and driving south to Samoens in the French Alps. Already I feel something shift inside, an...
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So much happens when no one is watching, perhaps because no one is watching Robert Bly ~ ‘Iron John’ I take a walk in Richmond park in the early hours – before the cars have left their mark of human disregard – and in this unwatched space I feel the sentience of trees and grass and birds. In their sight I feel held in significance. When no one is watching the earth turns. She drops her bounty...
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If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence George Eliot ~ Middlemarch I write to stay connected to the sound of my ‘creature heart’ – to the soaring, howling, beating, roaring, trickling, grass-growing, thoroughly ordinary experience of being alive. It’s not easy...
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Look, if you had, one shot, or one opportunity To seize everything you ever wanted. In one moment Would you capture it, or just let it slip ? Yo Eminem (Slim) – ‘Lose yourself’ These simple lines have been my anthem this year as I’ve carved my voice out of its rock. On the page Eminem’s rap barely touches the sides. It’s easy enough to let it slip. But take it off the page and listen to him...
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