Enough

These few words are enough. If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here. This opening to the life we have refused
again and again until now. Until now. (David Whyte)

This month I’m returning to the joy of responses to the Saturday story pebble dropped in the lake, the ripples reaching, lapping distant shores then circling back to the very place where the stone plunged into
the still water. The lovely sense of expansion as a 3 minute story echoes, reverberates in a wider conversation. This April, a story plus quote brought
these two of a dozen plus responses.

Quote: Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.(Walt Whitman)

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Sounds of Silence

Whoever is silent touches the roots of speech (Rilke)

Are words silent when not spoken? There they lie these unwhispered shapes with gaps between them. In music, these are grace notes. Perhaps like the nuanced Inuit words for snow, or the 96 Sanskrit words for love, strange we own one word for the many kinds of silences that vary from hostile to silence when contemplating the divine, (Wordsworth’s ‘the holy time is quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration’). to the silence of being alone in nature and listening to the sounds.

Then listening to the subliminal sounds of the blood coursing through, rising at pulse points, The beat of the heart, the sound of the breath. The Buddhist koan (riddle) ‘What is the sound of one the hand clapping?” Cicero’s ‘Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.’ Rumi’s ‘Sing to me in the silence of your heart and I will rise up to hear your triumphant song.’

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Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
Don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
And do not let the past weigh down your motion.
Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,
For life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
From your work you will be able one day to gather yourself. (Miguel de Unamuno)

Many Selves

Writing and storytelling can be blessed work in the sense of play. Here are two versions of a story (Tony Grogan illustrations) that speak many tongues.
Traveller Tzu-gung encounters an old man struggling i to irrigate his vegetable garden. Tzu-gung says, “There is a way to irrigate a hundred ditches in one day with little effort. Take a wooden lever, weighted at the back and light in front. In this way you can bring up water so quickly that it just gushes out. This is called a draw-well.”
Anger shows in the old man’s face, and he says, “I have heard my teacher say that whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine, and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul, which does not agree with honest sense. It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to use them.” (This could be a cautionary AI tale)

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life by artificial
means, and hold it fixed so that 100 years later, when a stranger looks
at it, it moves again. (Faulkner)

The Apple and the Egg

This December I wish to share and respond to Irwin Yalom’s Staring at the Sun (2008). A book to contemplate. I read it a decade ago, reread this week. His dedication reads, ‘to my mentors who ripple through me to my readers.’
enjoy meeting his mentors, the thinkers who inform his work all the way from Gilgamesh.
(‘Sorrow enters my heart, I am afraid of death.’) through Pascal, Dostoevsky,
Schopenhauer, Theroux, Rinpoche and and…

He writes. ‘The act of writing feels like renewal. I love the act of creation, from the first glimmering of an idea to the final manuscript. I find the sheer mechanics to be a source of pleasure. I love the carpentry of the writing process, finding the perfect word, sanding and burnishing rough sentences, tinkering with the tiktoks of phrase and sentence cadence. ‘

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GAGA

Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made….(Browning)

I wish you all a youthful 2026. This month, returning to a theme, GAGA (gracious aging, grateful aging) sharing from a recent storyshop in Sedgefield. We begin by playing the song, Don’t let the old Man in. Here are 4 verses :

Don’t let the old man in I wanna leave this alone Can’t leave it up to him He’s knocking on my door….
Many moons I have lived My body’s weathered and worn Ask yourself how would you be If you didn’t know the day you were born.
Try to love your wife And stay close to your friends Toast each sundown with wine Don’t let the old man in.
When he rides up on his horse And you feel that cold bitter wind Look out your window and smile Don’t let the old man in.

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In Praise of Portable Books: Aldus Manutius
A home without books is like a body without a soul. (Cicero)

In the novel, Buried Treasure (Sven Axelrad), Nova, a homeless young girl is
apprenticed to Mateus, the Master of Cemeteries. Mateus is dyslexic, so the name tag around his black dog’s neck reads ‘God.’ God does most of the grave digging.

Nova sleeps close to the Philosophical Dept (their soccer
team is called Kierkegoal) at the University in the town of Vivo. Her pillow is dog-eared copy of a 577 pager (Chilean novelist) seen in the image. About the quixotic travels of two poets. Nova absorbs the story during the night while asleep through a kind of literary osmosis. She’s able to
tell the stories in the morning.

Here’s another story embedded in another novel. In Venice there is a plaque, carved in stone, written in formal Italian. This marks the home of Aldus Manutius (1449-1515) a giant in publishing history. A Renaissance
humanist thinker who studied ancient Greek and Latin. Before Aldus, books were sealed in private collections or monasteries, inaccessible even to scholars.

Travelling Light

These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any
singing of it, (Alan Paton, Cry,the Beloved Country,)

This letter celebrates one of the numinous places on the earth (Buddhist Retreat Centre Ixopo hills) and the privilege of facilitating a
retreat there in late Sept. My 25th. When I teach in such a space, words come through not from me. The theme I chose was Travelling Light: Words to Lighten the Load along the Road. Here is the blurb:

Oh, tranquility
Penetrating the very rock,
A cicada’s voice. (Basho)

Writing and Mindfulness are close travelling companions, walking ancient paths. As they step through the natural world of wonders, they communicate sometimes ins ilence, sometimes in words. They offer healing of body, mind and spirit.

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A Writer’s Craft

There are two types of writers, architects and gardeners. The architects
have the whole thing designed and blueprinted. The gardeners dig a hole,
drop in a seed and water it. They know if they planted a fantasy seed or
mystery seed. As they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s
going to have, they find out as it grows. (George R.R. Martin)

As we practice our craft, we are called upon to read both writers on writing
and fiction. Here is the Chinese poet SuShi’s (1037-1101) secrets of writing:
Not liable to any set rules, a good piece of writing moves on freely and smoothly like floating clouds or flowing water. Clouds drift and form new skyscapes every other day; a good writer develops fitting styles for different
purposes. Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; a good writer works out his excellence in relation
to the materials about which he is writing. Thus is created the natural unity and coherence with rich spontaneous creativity.

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Ageing without getting Old

Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life,
for which the first was made….(Browning)

Of late I’ve been revisiting Octogenerianville where some of us live and
breathe, facilitating New Wine in Old Bottles – GAGA wordshops. GAGA (not
Lady) but Gracious Ageing, Grateful Ageing. (see offerings 6a and 6b at the
end of the letter.) So here we are, some of us hairless or silverhaired
(‘sure I love the dear silver that shines inyou hair’) filled with stories, rich in memory.

Like an artist we lie on our backs and paint our lives on
the ceiling. Like John Keats (who died at 25) ‘Much have (we) traveled in the realms of gold and many goodly states and kingdoms seen.’ How do we energise the myths we live by? Our big stories? Discovering these gifts to share and treasures to delight the mind, heart, eye and ear.

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A Writer’s Underwater Eyes

This month an August morning at sea near Mombasa invoked a metaphor for our writing. Early dawn. We walk to where Tierre’s moors his boat, Taratibu (Swahili go slowly.) We Yamaha out of the mouth of Mtwapa Creek into the open sea. Past thatched Monsoon Restaurant among the mangroves. The wood used for dhows and buildings. In the distance, the waves break.

We arrive at low tide, dodging the coral reefs, and then drop anchor. Already the boat settles onto the sandbar next to a coral reef. Ocean side to the east the surfsize waves. The red gazebo rises Out comes the braai grid, placed on the coral rocks. 360 degrees around us the sea. Lamb chops from Mount Kenya. Kebabs. Craft beer and wine almost as if in a floating restaurant yet embedded in sand.

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