re-imagine and re-story your life and work

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. ‘

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Dec-2025-letter.pdf

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.

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Jan-2026-letter-2.pdf

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.

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Nov-2025-letter-1.pdf

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.

http://dorianhaarhoffblog.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Sept-2025-letter.pdf

Presence, Memory and Imagination

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things (Rilke)

In life drawing classes the artist Degas (1834-1917) taught students to work from memory. There were three floors in the building – on the ground floor first year students sat with the model. Second year students drew on the first floor and third year students on the second. So the model was present in the face of first year students all the time, whereas second and third year students had to trip down the stairs to look at the model, then climb back to continue their drawing. Advanced students had further to climb, holding the new insights of angles, images, proportions, shade, in their picture mind. Then descend to check.

“Attention”, a voice began to call, and it was as though an oboe had suddenly become articulate. “Attention”, it repeated in the same high, nasal monotone. (Aldous Huxley, Island)

A Capful of Stories

In 1962, the year this novel was published, I entered Rhodes University as a firstyear student. It took years to integrate and practice the symbolic message of Huxley’s mynah birds. Here is part of a conversation between Will, a cynical journalist, shipwrecked on Pala, the utopia island and Susila, an inhabitant:

“ Is that your bird?” Will asked. She shook her head. “Mynahs are like the electric light…they don’t belong to anybody.”
“Why does he say those things?”
“Because somebody taught him, …”
“Why ‘Attention’? Why ‘Here and now?”
“Well …” She searched for the right words to explain the self-evident to
this strange imbecile. “That’s what you always forget, isn’t it? I mean, you
forget to pay attention to what’s happening. And that’s the same as not
being here and now.”