my writing

Tag: Writing

  • Autumn at La Balme

    p 270We spent four days alone together, the days and nights of the full moon. How happy she was, how contented to be here. For her it was a culmination, a fulfilment, what her long, extraordinary summer had been leading to, its fruition. That’s how she saw it, how she expressed it. At the end…

  • Total Eclipse, Turkey 2006.

    Total Eclipse, Turkey 2006.

    I walk through Roman ruins at Side, along a colonnaded way, past the Apollo temple. Many are sat in there. What will they see? Will they watch on screens? Further on there are sand dunes, low cliffs, excellent sea views, plenty of room – this place will work. I am in Turkey, on my birthday,…

  • Anselm Kiefer at La Ribaute, Barjac

    Anselm Kiefer at La Ribaute, Barjac

    I am cycling from Vallon-Pont-D’Arc, the village at the head of the Ardèche Gorge, remembering the Ardèche trout I ate last night, accompanied by a pichet of too much/just the right amount of white wine, outdoors, in the excellent company of a cosmopolitan Austrian couple, retired, who come here each year, towards the village of…

  • Swans on the River.

    I don’t know where they came from.I saw the last one arrive, descending with an easy parachute grace, its great wings cupping the air as its splayed feet touched the water, entered it, so that it landed with barely a splash. It folded its wings, settled with the others, afloat.There are twelve, dazzling as light,…

  • William Blake & The Art School Ball, 1966.

    p40 Dionysos’ Island. ‘On the day of the Arts Ball I read The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.It is impossible to convey the effect of reading that firework-box of statement and contradiction, directness and ambiguity, celebration and subversion, all carried along on a juggernaut of certainty. Line after incandescent line of it could be the…

  • Jacks, Bob Dylan, and ‘One Song Jukebox Number 1.’ 1971.

    p78. Dionysos’ Island. ‘On the overnight train down the length of Italy we take down the luggage and Simon and I use the netting racks as hammocks, leaving more sleeping space for the others. I look down at Jacks sleeping, sprawled and open-mouthed, then I’m rocked to sleep. I wake to a red dawn, the…

  • Leaving Shaftesbury for Greece, 1999 : Pages from ‘Odysseos’ Island’,

    p1. There is a moment. After my preparations, the note-taking, the buying and borrowing, the itinerary-writing, the spreading out and piling up of things to take – so that the flat was no longer a place to live but a resource at the service of going away, my first trip to Greece alone since 1971…

  • Introduction. &, Meeting Penny : Pages from ‘Dionysos’ Island’.

    INTRODUCTION The details of Richard’s disappearance filtered through to me slowly. Or perhaps I filtered them slowly. I had lost touch, ceased to keep in touch with him several years before, having run out of patience with his lack of focus, his failure to get on. When getting on, one needs the company of those…

  • Inside the Tower : pages from ‘Diggers and Dreamers’.

    Aug 21I’ve worked steadily. I finished the panels and glazing in the tower roof and it stands empty. No purpose has revealed itself. Why did I build it?I go in and stand and look around and wonder what it’s for. An orgone accumulator? A meditation chamber? A folly? At present, simply an empty space. ‘What…

  • Building the Tower : pages from ‘Diggers and Dreamers’.

    July 1In my silence and withdrawal, the other vision has been developing, becoming more real …A tower. A tower made with my own hands, whose walls connect the inside and outside: filtering, refining, intensifying what is outside inward; amplifying and radiating what is inside out. A tower whose anticlockwise winding steps I climb to the…